CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT
Unfinished at Puccini’s death in 1924,
Turandot was intended to be the
composer’s crowning achievement:
nothing less than a Puccinian grand
opera. The drama was based on
an eighteenth-century play by Carlo
Gozzi, and Puccini instructed his
librettists to ‘modernize and bring
human warmth to the old cardboard
figures’ of the fable of the ice-cold
Chinese princess Turandot. In the event
Puccini turned Gozzi’s ironic comedy
of the war of the sexes into a spinechilling
study in psycho-sexual
neurosis perfectly attuned to an era
coming to terms with Freud’s
sensational revelations about the
pathology of sexual repression, desire
and death.
Dr Nicholas Till, Director,
Centre for Research in Opera and Music
Theatre, University of Sussex
Rupert Goold’s Macbeth
14 Buy online www.eno.org
1926 poster design
for Turandot
OLIVIER TO OLIVER
Rupert Goold’s prolific directing career
includes the highly acclaimed, Olivier
Award-winning Macbeth with Patrick
Stewart for Chichester Festival Theatre.
Set in Stalinist Eastern Europe, it was
heralded as ‘The Macbeth of a lifetime’
(Evening Standard) and transferred to
Broadway. His Oliver! with Rowan
Atkinson continues to take the West
End by storm.
This ‘brilliantly inventive, heartstoppingly
scary production ... makes
almost every other show in London
seem tame’.
The Daily Telegraph on
Rupert Goold’s Macbeth
CLICK TO PLAY
None shall sleep now!
(Nessun Dorma)
I beg you,
hear me
Within this Palace
a story lives forever
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