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Giacomo Puccini: Turandot

Staging team

Cast

Turandot is the last opera by G. Puccini, who died shortly before finishing it. He found the theme in Schiller’s dramatisation of Carlo Gozzi’s Persian fairy-tale (originally a tale from the collection of dervish Mokles’ Thousand and One Nights) about a Chinese princess. The opera contains absorbing, highly dramatic scenes between the cruel princess Turandot and prince Kalaf. Puccini’s effort to achieve the truest possible Chinese vocal colour is strengthened by the use of pentatonics as the basic form of Chinese tonal system, easing the rhythm and often changing time, which is characteristic for the Chinese conception of music.

Premiere: Sep 15, 1995

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes with 2 intermissions
Performed in Italian with Czech and English captions.

Response in the press

“This production can take its place as one of the most compelling evenings in Prague.”

(Michael Halstead, The Prague Post, October 4, 1995)

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The Prague State Opera - Theatre History in Pictures and Dates - Book cover
The Prague State Opera – Theatre History in Pictures and Dates
Tomáš Vrbka
The Prague State Opera in cooperation with the Slovart publishing house publishes a representative book tracking the history of this significant cultural institution since its opening in 1888 till the end of the 2002/2003 season. The publication called The Prague State Opera – Theatre History in Pictures and Dates is focusing solely on the opera featured at the scene, even though the theatre under various names also served to presentation of drama plays, operettas and ballet. The Prague State opera plans to publish the volumes concentrating on those genres in the next years.

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