Turandot

The Chinese princess Turandot refuses marriage and demonstrates this with a cruel ritual: Any marriage applicant who does not solve her three riddles is beheaded. This brutal cycle continues until Calaf breaks it. With his last, unfinished opera Turandot, Giacomo Puccini created an incomparable score beyond the famous “Nessun dorma”: To tell a fairytale fantasy China, he mixed traditional Chinese music, pentatonic scales, unusual timbres and harsh dissonances to create a color that oscillates between lyrical delicacy and brute force. Franco Alfano completed the opera and wrote an unusually conciliatory conclusion for Puccini, which is counteracted in this production by Lorenzo Fioroni: In a timeless state that is reminiscent of current military dictatorships, brutality and trauma remain omnipresent. Camilla Nylund, known for her incomparable Wagner and Strauss portraits, can be seen here for once in the Italian repertoire in the challenging title role.

Dramma lirico in three acts by Giacomo Puccini Libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, based on the play of the same name by Carlo Gozzi Premiered on April 25, 1926 in Milan Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on September 13, 2008