100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (70 page)

A band of these Greeks invades the temple, looking for treasure rather than girls, and their anonymous leader is struck with awe by the sight of the women, waning as they play their lyres. Cassandra and her sister Polyxena (once the beloved of the Greek Achilles) stab themselves; most of the others hurl themselves from the gallery; and Cassandra, with her last
breath, stretches her arms toward Mount Ida and cries: “Italy!”

    
Postscript for the mythologically curious:
According to other versions of the story, Cassandra was carried home by Agamemnon as his concubine, and his wife, Clytemnestra, murdered both of them, using the beautiful newcomer as one of the excuses for her mariticide. Polyxena is also variantly reported as having been sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles on the demand of that redoubtable warrior’s ghost.

PART II: LES TROYENS À CARTHAGE
(The Trojans at Carthage)

ACT I

After an overture thoroughly in the spirit of classical tragedy, the action opens as Queen Dido and her Carthaginian subjects are having a thanksgiving festival in the gardens of her palace. Seven years before, Dido’s husband murdered, they had all fled to North Africa; and now, through hard work and the blessings of nature, they have established a prosperous city-state. When the subjects leave, Dido is approached by her sister Anna, who thinks it time for Dido to consider marrying again. In the duet that follows, Dido makes it clear that she wishes to remain faithful to the memory of her husband, but she also makes it clear that (like any classical lady in a French libretto) she yearns for love.

At the close of the duet a messenger announces that a storm has forced a fleet into the harbor of Carthage, and the strangers request an audience. In comes a group of sailors with a young boy who offers gifts. This boy turns out to be Ascanius, son of Aeneas, the glamorous leader of the Trojans. The interview is interrupted by Dido’s chief adviser Narbal, who announces the imminent invasion of the defenseless Carthaginians by a mighty Numidian force. Immediately one of the sailors throws off his disguise. It is Aeneas offering Dido the
use of his army and weapons in defense of Carthage. The offer is at once accepted, and the act ends with a martial call to arms.

ACT II

Between Act I and Act II, Aeneas and his followers have helped Dido throw back the invaders. The opera resumes with the one passage in the work fairly familiar to concert-goers. That is the
Royal Hunt and Storm
, which is a sort of ballet in which Aeneas and Dido are engaged in a hunt. They are overtaken by a storm and driven for shelter into a cave, where their love is consummated. The wild scenery and the hunt are graphically described by the orchestra, and toward the close wild nymphs and fauns are heard crying: “Italy, Italy!” These are reminders of the destiny of Aeneas, who must leave Dido and Carthage to go to Italy and found the great city of Rome.

Act II proper begins with a duet between Dido’s sister Anna and Narbal. That wise gentleman is worried because Dido is paying more attention to her beloved guest than to affairs of state. “Why worry?” asks Anna, for no one could make a more suitable King of Carthage than the heroic Aeneas. The only trouble is, counters Narbal, that Aeneas may not marry the girl: he has another future mapped out for him at Rome. At the close of their duet there is a ballet celebrating the victory of Aeneas. Then Dido calls for a song from the court minstrel, Iopas, who obliges with an ode in praise of Ceres, goddess of agriculture.

Now Aeneas relates the fate of Andromache, who married the son of the murderer of her beloved husband, Hector. As he talks, Dido falls more in love with him. Everyone is fascinated by the recital, and the act ends with a love duet based on the poetic exchange between Nerissa and Lorenzo in the last act of
The Merchant of Venice
. Yet, at its very close, comes the voice of Mercury, the messenger of the gods. He must urge Aeneas on his way; and he cries: “Italy, Italy, Italy!” like the nymphs and fauns earlier.

ACT III

We now move down to the harbor of Carthage, where the fleet of Aeneas is ready to sail. A young sailor named Hylas sings a nostalgic song of homesickness, and a group of Trojans comments on a strange phenomenon: the ghosts of various Trojans have been urging Aeneas to leave Carthage and go to Italy.

This somber scene is followed by the one comic scene in the whole opera. Two Trojan sentries talk about the hospitality and lack of race prejudice among their Carthaginian hosts. It has a strangely modern ring to it.

And now Aeneas, in a long monologue, complains of the fate that drives him from the arms of his beloved Dido. He decides to pay her one last visit. But then the shades of his fellow-warriors and relatives urge him to leave. Priam, Hector, Cassandra—their voices all unite in demanding that he go on to Italy. He finally decides to obey and orders everything readied for departure.

But then Dido reappears. Pitifully, reproachfully, she begs him to remain. His fate is ordained by the gods, he says; he must leave, and he must die in founding Rome. He loves her, but the gods are adamant. In a tower of anger she departs, denouncing him as a “monster of piety.” With her curses still sounding in his ears, he listens as the sailors make their joyous preparations. “Italy, Italy, Italy!” they shout.

ACT IV

Scene 1
In her palace Dido tries to persuade Anna to plead with Aeneas, but then Narbal brings the news that he is already at sea with his fleet. Now she is forever deserted. First she wishes to pursue him in her own ships and to burn the Trojan fleet; next she gives way to complete despair; and finally, as the scene ends, she sings a long last farewell to her own city of Carthage.

Scene 2
On a terrace overlooking the sea Dido commands
a huge pyre to be built. There she will sacrifice the tokens of her love to the gods. When all is in readiness, she mounts the pyre herself. In an ecstasy of inspiration she foresees the future invasion of Rome by Carthaginians under Hannibal. And then, again, she foresees the ruin of Carthage at the hands of the Romans. Finally, in utter despair, she seizes the sword Aeneas had left behind and stabs herself. As she utters her dying, savage cries, the chorus hurls a series of curses on the race of Aeneas, the race of the Trojans, and the Romans. But the
Trojan March
is played once more, and in the distance, behind the pyre, rises a vision of the Eternal City.

TURANDOT

Opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini with
libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato
Simoni, based on Carlo Gozzi’s drama of
the same name with some hints from Friedrich
von Schiller’s adaptation of it

Time: legendary

Place: Pekin

First performance at Milan, April 25, 1926

    Halfway through the final act, at the premiere of
Turandot
, the music stopped, Arturo Toscanini laid down his baton, and he turned to the audience to say: “Here the Maestro laid down his pen.”

Suffering from cancer of the throat and finally taken off by a heart attack, Puccini had not lived to complete the score of his last opera. Throughout the readying of the libretto (which was a slow business because one of the writers was a successful dramatist engaged in his own work), and throughout the composition of the score, Puccini was querulously complaining
that he might never live to finish it. Yet there is no sign of waning power in the music. It is bolder in its harmonies and orchestration than anything the composer had attempted before; there is a new mastery of choral effect; there is more dramatic power than in anything he had done for twenty years. True, there are some tiresome stretches (something much, one feels, of the philosopher-politicans Ping, Pang, and Pong); but if he had lived not only to complete the work but to revise it, it might well have achieved general popularity along with critical respect.

Franco Alfano, a friend of Puccini’s who, twenty years before, had achieved an international reputation with his opera
Resurrection
, completed the score with some help from Puccini’s notes for the final duet.

ACT I

In legendary times, in the city of Pekin, there dwelt the Princess Turandot. She was to be won only by a royal suitor who could answer three riddles. If he failed, he was to be executed.

When the opera opens, the Prince of Persia, having failed to answer the three questions, is about to be executed. He is to die at moonrise, and the excited crowd is calling for his death. In the melee an old man is knocked down and then rescued by a young man—the Unknown Prince. The old man is Timur, once King of the Tartars, and the young man is his son, Calaf, whom the King had believed lost since a disastrous battle. The King has been attended in his wanderings by a young slave girl, Liù, who helps the old King because she has been grateful to Calaf since the day that he once smiled at her in his palace.

As the moon begins to rise, the mob has a change of heart and demands pardon for the gallant young Prince of Persia. But Turandot appears in all her cold regal beauty and silently gives the sign for his execution. The crowd follows the death procession.

Calaf, having now seen Turandot, is madly in love with her.
He is warned repeatedly not to try the three riddles which have caused so many deaths. Timur asks him to refrain; Liù begs him not to attempt the enigmas; and so do the three ministers, Ping, Pang, and Pong. Calaf’s answer to Liù is the sympathetic aria
Non piangere
, Liù—“Do not weep, Liù.” But nothing can persuade him. As the act closes, he strikes the great gong before the palace, and calls out Turandot’s name to signify the arrival of one more suitor for her hand.

ACT II

In an introductory scene three ministers of the court at Pekin philosophize. They are Ping (the Grand Chancellor), Pang (Supreme Lord of Provisions), and Pong (Supreme Lord of the Kitchen), and they are based on stock figures from the
commedia dell’ arte
. Their commentary is on the trouble caused by Turandot’s dangerous game of riddles and on the charms of the quiet life in the homes they came from.

The curtains are drawn to show the full court assembled, and the Emperor, echoing the ministers’ sentiments, asks Calaf to retire from the contest. Naturally, he refuses. The Princess herself now warns Calaf in her turn. She explains the reason for the game: it is designed to avenge an ancient ancestress who had been captured by an enemy and who had died in exile. Turandot warns Calaf once more; but at the close of the duet their voices join in agreeing on a brutally brief summary of the rules: the riddles are three in number; the life to be paid is but one.

Thereupon the riddles are propounded and answered:

Question: What phantom is born every night and dies the next day?

Answer (very prompt): Hope.

Question: What blazes like a fever when you think of great deeds but grows cold in death?

Answer (almost as prompt): Blood.

(The crowd encourages Calaf before Turandot silences them and poses the third riddle.)

Question: What is the ice that sets you on fire?

Answer (given after considerable hesitation and some taunts from the Princess):
Turandot!

The crowd is delighted that the young Prince has correctly answered the fateful riddles, but Turandot is not. She begs the Emperor to be let off the indignity of marrying a foreigner, but he answers that his oath is not to be violated. Calaf, however, is not only in love; he is magnanimous as well. He proposes that Turandot be relieved of this fate and that his own life be given up if she can answer, by the next morning, but a single riddle—his name.

ACT III

Once again, as in Act I, we are in the gardens before the walls of Pekin. The herald explains that no one must sleep in Pekin that night before the name of the Unknown Prince is discovered: the penalty is death. Rather pleased than otherwise, Calaf sings his aria
Nessun dorma
—“No one must sleep.” He is confident that he alone will be in a position to reveal his name, and that Turandot shall be his bride.

The three gabby ministers offer Calaf all sorts of inducements to tell them his name, including a guaranteed safe-exit visa from China. He is not interested.

Now Timur and Liù are roughly brought in by the guards. As they have been seen talking to Calaf, they must know his name. Liù boldly claims that she is the only one who knows it, and cruel torture is at once applied; but in vain. Turandot, coming on the scene, asks what gives the girl such powers of resistance. It is love, she says, and in the aria
Tu, che di gel sei cinta
—“You who are encircled by ice”—she prophesies that one day Turandot will love Calaf. At the close of the aria she seizes a dagger from a soldier, and, fearful that she may break under further torture, stabs herself to death. Timur bursts out in anger, but he and the body of Liù are carried out by the crowd, and Turandot is left alone with the Unknown Prince.