Beautiful and cruel at the same time: Turandot tells a story of power, fear, and desire—and of a woman who radically defies social expectations. Giacomo Puccini's last opera combines archaic myth with music of eruptive modernity.
Princess Turandot refuses to marry and subjects her suitors to a deadly test: three riddles that decide between life and death. Those who fail are publicly executed. When Prince Calaf, who has returned from exile, arrives in Beijing, he nevertheless falls under Turandot's aloof spell. Against all warnings, he accepts the challenge – and actually solves all three riddles. However, his triumph brings no redemption: Turandot's power structure is shaken, and a bitter conflict erupts that also drags innocent people into the abyss.
The myth of Turandot, which originated in Persia, offered Puccini the opportunity to further develop his musical language. In addition to grand lyrical arcs and bel canto expressiveness, sharp dissonances, rhythmic condensations, and floating soundscapes characterize the score. The monumental choral scenes in particular reflect the violence of collective movements – an echo of the political tensions that shaped Europe in the early 1920s.
At the same time, Turandot remained a fragment. Puccini's goal of convincingly portraying the protagonist's transformation from a hateful to a loving character was interrupted by his death in 1924. The final love duet existed only as a sketch. In the current production, the work is preceded by a newly composed prologue by Lucia Ronchetti, which opens the opera with an atmospherically dense prelude—a quiet foreshadowing of a catastrophe that unfolds inexorably with the first bars of Puccini's music.
Premiere April 12
Further performances: April 16, 19, and 25, May 1, 3, 9, 14, 17, 23, and 29, June 4, 2026
