Busoni: Turandot, BV 273

Description

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 "Arlecchino" in Zurich on 11 May 1917.