The young Franco Alano was chosen to write an ending that would conform as closely as possible to Puccini’s indications. Death, this time, was stronger than art.” On his deathbed, some sketches for the final duet were found he had wanted to make it the equal of the second act of Wagner’s masterpiece, Tristan and Isolde (1865). During his composing, having reached the pinnacle of the score for the little slave’s suicide, Toscanini stopped and declared to the audience: “It is here that Giacomo Puccini interrupted his work. As fate would have it, the poignant death of Liù, which is one of the first pages Puccini completed, will also be the last. She makes a satisfying contrast with the cold and inflexible Turandot, immersed in her neurotic frigidity. She is the last “sister” of Mimi in La Bohème and of the delicate and too-trusting Madame Butterfly. He closely oversaw the work of his librettists, whom he asked to find “something that will make the world cry.” That gave rise to the deeply moving character of Liù, the archetype of what has been called “the little Puccinian woman.” Liù, the young slave embodying love to the point of supreme sacrifice, condenses all the characteristics of these affecting heroines whose fragility and ingenuousness are the sign of unavoidable loss. He carried through on his project despite exhausting episodes of doubt about his own creative skills. Fascinated in turn by the barbarian romanticism of a mysterious fable of love and death, Puccini began work on it in 1920. It was the staging of a play by Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806) that drew Puccini’s attention to the terrifying and captivating legend of the cruel princess “Turandotte.” This disturbing story had already inspired several works, the most important of which is the opera by Ferrucio Busoni (1917)).

Giacomo rise of legends