Turandot: a double torment for Puccini

Puccini was tormented by the final of Turandot which could not be completed missing the ultimate draft of the two final scenes.

The duet, the great love duet between Calaf and the Princess, was a real obsession for the Master. He wrote to Adami: “The duet, the duet, the duet! All the decisive, the beauty, the sincerely theatrical is there!”. And he explained: “It must be a great duet.

The two beings, almost out of this world, enter among human beings for love and this love must at the end invade everyone on stage in an orchestral peroration…”. This duet, ironically, was never finished. Puccini had gathered all his energy to create something very high and transmit his message to the world: the triumph of omnipotent love over man’s inhumanity. That throat pain that had begun to torment him did not give him rest: some specialists had been consulted and they underestimated the extent of the disease as they spoke of inflammation, tonsillitis.

Actually Puccini had a throat cancer. The family had been confirmed this after a consultation with Dr. Torrigiani. The disease was in a very advanced stage. All that was left to do was trying an X-ray treatment. The treatment was practiced in Berlin and in Brussels. They chose Brussels, the Institut de la Couronne directed by dr. Ledoux. Puccini did not suspect the truth, but he knew he was seriously ill. On November 4th 1924 Puccini left for Brussels accompanied by his son Tonio. He took with him the thirty-six pages of the duet and the final scene of Turandot, hoping to complete them in Brussels. Turandot has been his torment until the end. A suffering added to the painful and useless treatment to which he was subjected in his last days of life. When it seemed there was a slight improvement, Puccini collapsed and died within a few hours. He died in that clinic in Brussels on 29th November 1924.

Find out more about Turandot’s Final. See Also:

Turandot: Puccini’s latest and most suffered Opera

Turandot: a double torment for Puccini

The final of Turandot, Toscanini and Alfano

Article written by Maria Primiceri – teacher of Piano at the Tito Schipa Conservatory of Lecce and scholar of women musicians with events and conferences on Nannerl Mozart, the wives of Bach, Maria Szymanowska, Fanny Mendelssohn

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mariaprimiceri@libero.it