Puccini's Turandot is one of my favorite operas. The premise is simple: The princess does not want marry and will only wed the man who successfully completes her challenge. Naturally if he does not succeed, he dies; in this case he loses his head. An unknown hero arrives, tries his luck, and wins. Now he puts a challenge before her: If she can guess his name before dawn, she can execute him (if she wants). So the entire city is kept up all night on pain of death so that the hero's name can be revealed.
I have always found the character of Princess Turandot to be rather fascinating. She has sworn only to marry the man who correctly answers her three riddles. In her aria "In Questa Reggia", she claims that her reason for this challenge was due to the fact that her ancestress, the Princess Lo-u-Ling, was raped and murdered by a foreign king. She's so terrified of what happened to Lo-u-Ling that she thinks it will happen to her as well. And so she uses this one incident (that happened thousands of years ago), as an excuse to not marry and attempts to justify her having suitors answer the riddles or die.
In their trio at the beginning of Act 2, the three magistrates speak of one prince who had a spectacular longbow, another had many furs, and yet another had lots of golden riches. This means that previous suitors had apparently tried to impress the princess with their strength, riches and power (which naturally backfires in a tale like this). When Calaf comes along, Turandot says that she saw in his eyes the glint of a hero. Now Calaf is described as the Unknown Prince, not to mention his father had been dethroned a not too long ago. This means that Calaf probably does not have much on him in the first place. What he does have is determination and persistence. And Turandot seems to notice this. e. When Calaf succeeds in answering the riddles, Turandot is shaken and does not want to give up her power. That's when Calaf puts forth his challenge: She can execute him if she can guess his name before dawn. Remember that he's still the Unknown Prince at this point.
Turandot decrees that none shall sleep on pain of death until the stranger's name is discovered. When Calaf's father and slave girl are brought before the princess, everyone is sure they'll get the answer. But the slave girl says that while she alone knows the answer, she will keep silent. She is tortured, but still refuses to talk. And this impresses Turandot. She probably has never seen anyone show so much courage under torture. The slave girl tells her that she loves the prince and that she will resin silent out of that love for him. She then says that Turandot will love the prince as she does, and then she kills herself without saying any more. When Calaf is left with Turandot, he rebukes her for her cruelty. She resists initially, but then Calaf kisses her and she finally gives in. Now, critics at the time the opera was premiered argued that Turandot's change of heart could only have been hormonal. Well, not quite. She says that she fell in love with Calaf the first time she saw him, which means she must have had a rush of feelings an did not know what they were (I know this from experience), and it scared her. She has tried to maintain her cold icy personality, but Calaf's persistence in his love for her slowly thaws her out. In the end she gives up the fight because she sees no use in further resisting him. She tells Calaf to leave him with his secret, but he reveals it to her and tells her that she may do with him as she pleases. She chooses to marry him, because she wants to and he clearly cares about her. She declares to her father and the assembled crowd that the stranger's name is Love.
I love this character's progression. Turandot starts out as a cold unfeeling princess who is basically held prisoner by the story of her ancestress, to a woman who knows genuine love and emotion. And recently I thought of a possible bit of staging for this: Turandot is haunted by the ghost of Lo-u-ling who accompanies her through the first half of Act 3, and when Calaf kisses Turandot and she surrender's, Lo-u-ling's ghost is banished. I think that can be pulled off rather well.
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