We can not understand "Turandot" if we do not take account of the atmosphere where it is held. Not East talk about the environment, the chinoiserie, as they were called back when Carlo Gozzi wrote the story and where they went out of fashion. This only serves to create distance, to place the story "far, far away ..." and illo tempore, as in all fairy tales should be to bring out their best to distance universal meaning. I speak instead of the atmosphere, to the time in which there is the story and that is crucial for its symbolic meaning. Well, the work begins in the evening, in full lunar atmosphere - in fact the moon has not yet arisen, invoking the waiting ("Because the moon late?") - And takes place virtually all at night ("Nessun dorma "...) resolved until dawn, when Calaf's victory coincided with the sunrise.
collective heritage is now recognition that the symbolism of the moon is a feminine, while the sun is masculine ("Casta Diva "...). But what does this mean and why is it so important?
begin by saying that symbol is not allegory (ie something that stands in the place of something else, can replace and can also be constructed intentionally), but it's an image that is imposed spontaneously in consciousness, profodità springing from the collective unconscious, and is the best bridge, the best solution to combine the two opposites and to represent the many elements that would be inconsistent with each other.
The word "symbol" in fact comes from greek syn - ballein , which means "to put together, unite," and was used specifically to name the tablets or medals at the time of departure or a mission, perhaps diplomatic , were broken and the fragments were taken from the two components (those leaving and those who remained) only due to their mating, at the time of the reunion, she had to guarantee the authenticity of reunification. symbol tends to reconstruct an "original unity", a fullness of meaning, that our consciousness tends to lose too varied and fragmented. The opposite of "symbolic" is significantly the "evil" (to give - ballein = "separate"), the separator, which divides and fragments the original unity. The devil has separated man from God
After quest'excursus necessary to understand the quality of the symbol, we return to the moon and Turandot. We said that the moon is a feminine symbol, but even here we encounter a difficulty, because our language, now crystallized in a matter of codification, identifies "female" with the woman, that is the female of the human species. Well, for the symbolic meaning is not so. The "feminine" and "male" alluded to when they appear in the symbols are archetypal aspects, and they contain a transpersonal, a kind of matrix that brings the special features that just because they reside and operate in the depths of psychic structure are common to all human beings, men and women. Needless to say, if you are named, there will be closest analogy to the way in which the woman or the man you acknowledge and are structured, both biologically and psychologically and socially.
The most striking feature of the moon, one that has always captured the imagination of even our primitive ancestors, is its variability, not only with respect to the rising and setting, but its growth characteristics, swell, decrease and decrease until it disappears, then returns with the new phase, with a precise rhythm of 28 days. The analogy between the moon grows to fullness and roundness of the belly of the woman, which is swelling in pregnancy until the birth of a child and then deflates, led, even when you do not know the man's role in conception (for longer than you think), to recognize in the moon "the lord of women" and attributed to the penetration of its radius fertilizing effect.
I'm not talking, for obvious reasons of space, of the many myths and legends on these issues, common to virtually all people and that can be found in many books on the history of primitive religions or those of analytical psychology of Jung on, first of all the wonderful work of Dr. M. Esther Harding, "Mysteries of Women" (ed. Astrolabe), to which I refer to those who wish to learn.
Similarly, the moon has become a direct sponsor of "all that grows, fertility and fecundity in the vegetative and animal nature. Even now, our farmers know to plant, harvest, or cut, so that the operation is successful, it must comply with the phases of the moon ...
But the moon is not only and always beneficial and guarantor of fertility (Isis, Artemis ...); there is also the "Black Moon", the disturbing aspect and negative, associated with death and destruction: the other side that each archetype brings with mythological and Kali is represented by , on the other goddesses Hecate and looking terrific.
addition, the moon, the night belonged to, has to do with all the meanings attached to it, in both positive and negative sense: the matrix of consciousness, but the representative of darkness, and the unconscious than the sun itself as the representative of the light awareness day and the center of the male world.
Turandot overlaps immediately lunar symbolism in his disturbing and negative aspect: it is invoked and appears with the moon, and confirms that his death sentence is carried out just at moonrise. The melody of preparations for the appearance of the moon and Turandot is brilliantly evocative, and very interesting are the words addressed to the moon: "severed head", "squalid", "wan", "pale," "taciturn," "funeral lumen of the cemeteries, "" gaunt lover of the dead "... There's enough here to understand that the appearance of this moon is its deadly side. This also characterizes
Turandot: it is invoked with the word "white as jade, as cold as that sword ...". It is the cruel princess who challenges men, those have the misfortune to fall in love with her, with puzzles tough and condemns them with coldness and determination to a horrible death.
The edict which opens the work speaks for itself: "People in Beijing, this is the law." But in all this dreary waiting, the mysterious chorus of boys ("the mountains of Eastern ..."), with its wonderful music and suggestive, introduces a transformative element: hope or perhaps the premonition that things can change , ice melt and the trees bloom again ...
We will see in the second act because of so much negativity and the reasons for the choice of the vengeful princess.
Click here for the lyrics to "Why the moon late?".
PEOPLElate Why the moon? Pale face! See them in heaven! Soon come!
Tick! Severed head! O miserable! Come! Check! See them in heaven!
severed head! O bloodless! O pale or dingy! O
silent! O gaunt lover of the dead! O taciturn, shown in the sky!
as expected, or silent, light your funeral cemeteries!
O pale, shabby! Severed head! Here there is a glimmer!
Come early, check! Severed head, check! Come! Severed head, come!
show, or pale face! O pale face! O pale, pale!
Come, gaunt lover of the dead! O gaunt lover of the dead! Come, come, rise!
there's a gleam, is rampant in the sky, its faint light!
ALL
Pu-Tin-Pao! The moon has risen!
BOYS
there in the mountains of Eastern stork crew.
But April did not revived, but the snow did not thaw.
From desert to the sea you do not hear a thousand voices whisper:
"Princess, come to me, all things will flourish, everything will shine!"
Ah!
Director: Zubin Mehta
Director: Herbert von Karajan
The last great Puccini opera is inspired by a fairy tale: A seemingly harmless and delightful choice (considering that, with a lot of superficiality and lightness, usually think of the fairy tale as a product - even worse, a byproduct - only suitable for children) but in fact extremely challenging and exciting, like it is now considering the time (four years) and the amount of energy expended by Puccini ; time and energy that were not, however, sufficient to lead to term "Turandot." 
Art has always fished in this beautiful and boundless wealth, even helping to sustain, enrich and shape it, or by direct inspiration of the artists who fish from their unconscious or transcription starting from free and creative mythological tracks already exist. Homer is already the prototype of the poet-singer who uses a creative and amplify the stories and the stories of legendary heroes and gods, contributing to the transmission and enrichment of culture. In the world of music just think of Wagner or the "Magic Flute" by Mozart to open your eyes to the importance of the themes and mythological fable. 
few words of introduction to frame "Turandot" in terms of historical music. This is the last work of Giacomo Puccini left unfinished because the author's death on 28 November 1924. 
"Turandot" is a work of great interest both in terms of form, or musical, both in terms of content, namely in relation to the history (in this case the story) that is told. 
So a new musical language, but also a new subject. After the Triptych of 1919 (think "The cloak" a masterpiece of musical theater of the twentieth century), claimed that Puccini was tired or sentimental subjects drawn from everyday reality. In Italy he had not yet concluded that both literary and musical aesthetic movement called "realism," which took in the scene news stories daily or feelings of ordinary people, once over the period in which the opera had celebrated the exploits of the mythical or historical heroes (Verdi and Wagner). So, while he was looking for a new entrant to music, when Renato Simoni (drama critic and playwright) the reference to a fairy tale, that of Princess Turandot, written by the Venetian Gozzi in 1700, Puccini realized he had found what he sought: a fact that should take place outside of time, or better "at the time of fables." And he started to work. 
a sad summer. In early September to be in Milan to discuss the forthcoming first Toscanini. But it is completely worn out and sore throat continues to haunt him. 
Today Turandot is incomplete because it represented at the suggestion of Toscanini, who conducted the first and then at La Scala in 1926, the composer Franco Alfano was given the task of music for the missing text. Alfano rightly did nothing but take melodic themes of the earlier acts and to adapt to the text. So the music is by Puccini, but not the new tune, one he had in mind to create for this end. He should have and wanted to write something really new: the thaw of Turandot. We know, as evidenced by her letters, which Puccini had always considered this final duet, the most important part of the whole work. At this point, it becomes legitimate to ask why he waited until the last, because they wrote it before, because they do not necessarily following an author composes in parallel text. When he was obliged to do so, came the illness and death. Because this removal? On his musical inspiration, it was more natural to the sacrifice of Liu, who in fact is the last page he wrote, and that is logically connected and musically to the deaths of Manon, Mimi, Tosca, Butterfly, Sister Angelica. The audience still wanted this from him. Puccini, as we saw, but wanted to renew. It was found Turandot. But the task was probably the largest of its possibilities. The image of women that challenge the man on his own ground, as it does today, it was still premature at the time. And Puccini himself was tied to a traditional conception of women, that we find in Liu. We can say that the opera ends with the death of Liu, a typical Puccini heroine. Turandot was a mirage, just a fairy tale. 
