Ferruccio Busoni

Turandot K 273

Text by the composer based on a drama by Carlo Gozzi
Translation: ital. (O. Previtali)
Place of the action: In the outmost orient (Beijing)

Characters: Altoum, Emperor (bass) – Turandot, his daughter (soprano) – Adelma, her confidante (mezzo-soprano) – Kalaf (tenor) – Barak, his servant (baritone) – the Queen-Mother of Samarkand, a moor (soprano) – Truffaldino, chief eunuch (tenor) – Pantalone, minister (bass) – Tartaglia, minister (bass) – Eight Doctors (4 tenors, 4 basses) – A Singer (mezzo-soprano) – The Executioner, A Priest (silent roles) – choir: slaves, dancers, mourners, eunuchs, soldiers (SSAATTBB)

Those enthusiastic about the Turandot topic and wanting to feel its Italian provenance are much better guided by Busoni than by Puccini. In Turandot Busoni draws in-depth on elements of the commedia dell’arte; in Turandot he obviously does so via Carlo Gozzi’s play that had already motivated Schiller’s translation. As a publication preliminary to the Busoni year 2024, the new Turandot Urtext edition includes Oriana Previtali’s singable translation in the full score and piano reduction accommodating the hitherto already lively reception in Italy. The music text is based on the relevant sources (full-score copies made during Busoni’s lifetime), all of them located in the publishing house archives.

Busoni’s work, which antedates Puccini’s famous setting by a few years, seems rather cool in com-parison to the later piece. “Busoni tones down the colors of his orientalisms and totally eschews sentimental lyricism. His strengths lie especially in the scintillating, unfathomable characters and in a music that hovers in an ambivalent manner between brightness and darkness, sadness and humor, danger and harmlessness. This work of art makes its references clear: Gozzi’s play about the murderous princess is peopled with familiar commedia dell’arte figures, and one is not quite sure whether this mixture of fun and danger gives a more relaxed feeling to the activity on the stage or whether it does not do precisely the opposite, adding the irreconcilable perspective of a gondola trip on the edge of a bottomless gulf. Busoni is more faithful to Gozzi than Puccini and thus to the gracious levity that hovers over the excesses of the action. His mild chinoiseries repeatedly lead to a Neo-Classicism inspired by Venetian folklore.” (Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, 1985) “Turandot” was premiered with Busoni's “Arlecchino” in Zurich on 11 May 1917.