In 1921, Giacomo Puccini began composing an opera which was to be his last. The story was based on a play by Gozzi, also set by Schiller, which in turn owes much to the Greek archetypal myths of such as Atalanta, Hippodameia, and Thetis. The archetypes of the reluctant bride, ice princess, femme fatale, and intellectual or athletic woman mix in these myths and plays, and reflect a fascination through time with the unattainably desired woman. Turandot, the princess who kills her spurned lovers, combines
these archetypes and keeps us guessing today in the various dramatic settings of her story. This paper will focus on Turandot’s story as presented in Puccini’s opera, one of many different reflections on this archetypal fairy tale.
these archetypes and keeps us guessing today in the various dramatic settings of her story. This paper will focus on Turandot’s story as presented in Puccini’s opera, one of many different reflections on this archetypal fairy tale.
Turandot, through the opera glass
The story of Turandot, in Puccini’s opera (libretto by Adami and Simoni), begins with an emperor who seeks to marry his daughter, the Princess Turandot, to a worthy prince. The Princess, for reasons better explored later, wants no part of marriage, men or foreigners, all of which she must confront. She devises a contest to effectively eliminate these threats. She believes her strategy to be infallible, because she herself adjudicates and awards the prize. The suitors must answer 3 riddles of her choosing, and if one should succeed in answering all three correctly, he may marry the princess and become heir apparent to the empire. But if he should fail, he dies by decapitation in the public square. Because the princess is beautiful and enchanting as well as dangerous, many princes risk their lives to win her hand, and just as many die. As the opera begins, we hear these rules proclaimed to the people of Peking, and amid the noise of the crowd, yet another suitor appears. He is the son of an exiled king, and is met in Peking by his blind father and devoted slave Liu, who are in hiding and living by mendicancy. The Prince (Il Principe Ignoto) approaches the contest fearlessly, and solves all three riddles. At the point when she must fulfill her promise, Turandot refuses to wed the prince. Her father reminds her that the contest is honor bound (e sacro il giuramento) and she must follow through with the promise she made. She begs him not to force her. The Prince, at this juncture, asks her to accept his own challenge. “You have set three riddles for me, and I have solved them. One only I shall set for you. My name you know not. If you can tell me my name before dawn, I shall die as you wish.” And so the ruthless Turandot imposes the task of discovering the name upon the people of Peking. She captures the faithful slave Liu, and tortures her in hopes that she will divulge the name. Liu speaks of her love for the prince and refuses to betray him. For this, for his life, she kills herself rather than betray him. The old king, alone and blind, disappears once more into exile. In the morning, Turandot must once more face her sacred oath. The prince forcibly kisses her, and she is torn between her dignity and her strange situation. Her heart changed but her manner defiant, she appears before father and populace to proclaim, “I now know the stranger’s name. His name is Love.” (Gia conosco il nome dello straniero. E il suo nome Amor.) And the people of Peking rejoice in the power of love.
Puccini’s sources
This story is greatly adapted from Gozzi’s original, and Schiller’s adaption, on which Puccini more closely modeled his version. But the similarities of all three with Greek myth are apparent. Atalanta, a mythical Greek heroine, meant never to marry, because it was prophesied that marriage would be her ruin.[1] She set a challenge to keep her many suitors from their goal: race her, and the winner may marry her; but those who are outrun die. Hippomenes, the judge of her contest, realized why so many youths would risk their lives for her: she is beautiful and strong. She herself noticed his love for her, and pitied him, wishing that he would either give up on the contest, or outrun her. Unknown to Atalanta, Hippomenes prays to Venus and the goddess aids him by giving him golden apples. These he throws in Atalanta’s path as they race, and she is distracted and bested. The myth has an unfortunate end: we are told by Bulfinch that the couple failed to pay due attention to Venus, and having offended Cybele, are turned into lions.
The stories of Turandot and Atalanta also have themes in common with that of Thetis.[2] She was loved by Zeus, but a prophesy that Thetis’ son would be greater than his father stopped Zeus from sleeping with her himself. He arranged for her to marry the mortal Peleus, but she evaded him by changing shapes. Eventually she runs out of shapes, and they are married. Once again the story has an unhappy end: the goddess Eris is slighted by not being invited to their wedding, and starts a chain of events which lead to the Trojan War, where Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, will die.
Atalanta’s pride was her physical prowess, equal to that of many men. Thetis, as a sea nymph, had the power to change shape to evade Peleus. And Turandot’s specialty is her mind, intelligence, wit: what the Greeks called metis, cleverness, cunning. This is a quality considered not entirely appropriate for women. When characters such as Juno and Medea contrive to achieve their aims, they are exemplifying metis, and myth views them as overreaching the normal station of womanhood. Medea herself breaks the rules of nature by killing her own children, after finding all other recourse to be futile; Juno is a goddess and consequently of higher social standing than others of her sex, but still held up to the same standards of fidelity, integrity, and affection, which at times her jealous nature causes her to ignore. Greek myth is not kind to women when they act unnaturally, and Turandot’s reliance on metis is not portrayed any more favorably. Turandot employs her wit to keep the suitors away, both by the idea of the contest itself (rather than submitting to marriage) and by the nature of the trial. The riddles she proposes are philosophical but at the same time, relevant and significant to the story. Her power to kill men makes an alliance with her all the more desired as it is dangerous, though ultimately her fate is to be deprived of her power.
The First Riddle:[3]
Turandot: Nella cupa notte vola un fantasma iridescente, sale e dispiega l’ale sulla nera infinita umanita’. Tutto il mondo l’invoca e tutto il mondo l’implora! Ma il fantasma sparisce coll’aurora per rinascere nel cuore! Ed ogni notte nasce ed ogni giorno muore!
Il Principe: Si, rinasce! Rinasce in esultanza mi porta via con se’, Turandot, la speranza!
Turandot: Si, la speranza che deluda sempre.
Turandot: A shining spirit flies through the night, spreading its wings over infinite humanity. All the world calls on it and implores it! But the spirit disappears with the dawn to revive in the heart! And every night it is reborn, and every day it dies again!
The Prince: Yes, it is reborn! It is reborn, and takes me with it. It is hope!
Turandot: Yes, hope, which always deludes.]
Here Turandot seems to be warning the Prince. In the moments before she tells him the first riddle, she reminds him that there are three riddles to answer, but one death (Gli enigma sono tre, la morte e una!). By the time Puccini set the text by Adami and Simoni, the character of Turandot had undergone many changes. Several scenes in the earlier plays had been cut or revised, focusing our attention on the cruel and cold aspects of her nature. Here at least she seems fair enough to offer this warning. Do not hope to win, because there is still more to come, and hope is false; only death is sure.
The Second Riddle:
Turandot: Guizza al pari di fiamma, e non e fiamma. E talvolta delirio! E febbre d’impeto e ardore! L’inerzia lo tramuta in un languore. Se ti perdi o trapassi, si raffredda. Se sogni la conquista, avvampa, avvampa! Ha una voce che trepido tu ascolti, e del tramonto il vivido baglior!
Il Principe: Si, Principessa! Avvampa e insieme langue, se tu mi guardi, nelle vene il sangue!
Turandot: Flashing like flame, but not flame, it may be an illusion. It is impetuous and ardent fever! Inertia changes it to languor. If you become lost, it cools; if you dream of conquest, it grows, blazes! You hear its voice with trepidation, it is the vivid glow of sunset!
The Prince: Yes, Princess! It blazes and yet languishes, if you look at me, the blood in my veins!
The Prince’s response betrays his impetuous passion for Turandot. She says nothing in response to him and tells the guards to dismiss the crowd. She goes on to the third and last riddle, which may be fatal – to both of them.
The Third Riddle:
Turandot: Gelo che ti da foco e dal tuo foco piu gelo prende! Candida e oscura! Se libero ti vuol, ti fa piu servo! Se per servo t’accetta, ti fa Re! (Il Principe non respira piu. Turandot e su lui, curva come sulla sua preda e soggighna.) Su, straniero! Ti sbianca la paura! E ti senti perduto! Su, straniero, il gelo che ti da foco, che cos’e?
Il Principe: (balza in piedi con forza, esclama:) La mia vittoria ormai t’ha data a me! Il mio foco ti sgela: Turandot!
Turandot: Ice that yields fire, and from fire becomes colder! White and dark! If it wants you to be free, it enslaves you further; if it wants you for a slave, it makes you King! (The Prince breathes not. Turandot is above him, as if gloating over prey.) Up, foreigner! Fear whitens you, and you feel yourself lost! Come, stranger, ice that yields fire, what is it?
The Prince: (jumps to his feet forcefully, exclaiming) You have given me victory! My fire freezes you: Turandot!
This riddle, describing Turandot herself, adds dimension to her emotions in this moment. The “ice that gives you fire, and from your fire grows colder,” is such a strong description of her reaction to his ardor. The riddle also hints at the relationship between them. “If [she] wants you free, [she] further enslaves you. If [she] wants you for a slave, you will be made King.” The riddle seems to allow for different outcomes for this situation, after the riddle is solved or unsolved. She seems to accept the possibility that the Prince may win, marry her and become king, but what does this say of how she would behave under such conditions?
With this riddle, Turandot believes she has won. His silence spurs her on, and she stands over him, urging him to guess, and fail. But her riddle this time is so personal and revealing, that he guesses triumphantly, and the crowd acclaims him. Turandot begs her father, and tells him that as sacred as his oath is, she, his daughter, is also sacred. Finding him unmoved, she turns to the prince and asks if he wants her by force, reluctant and trembling? He tells her that he wants her, the proud Princess, ardent with love, and then proposes his own challenge. If she can guess his name, he will submit to the fate of those who have tried and lost. The Emperor affirms the new challenge, but tells the prince that the new dawn will make him the Emperor’s son. He believes the Prince will win.
In Gozzi’s version, the Princess is less of an ice-goddess, and more of a complicated, spoiled princess who is the intellectual equal or better of the men who pursue her. “…worst of all her vices is her pride,” the prince is told in the third scene. The prince is properly horrified by such a strange contest, and, newly arrived in Peking, has no idea of why so many would try to win the princess. Unfortunately for him, he finds her picture, and (like Hippomenes) is smitten, and decides to seek her himself. Gozzi’s Turandot loses no time in proclaiming her hatred of men, in her first entrance. She tells her confidant that pity, which she has not felt before, she feels now for this latest suitor. But she tells the suitor that her only pride is her intelligence, and insists that “[she knows] that [she] should die / If any man were victor of [her] mind.”
Gozzi’s Turandot places three equally philosophical riddles before her prince, but they are slightly less personal, though interestingly enough, their language is lush and almost sensual. For instance, Turandot describes hope and faith as a
tender pair of doves,
As white as innocence, as frail as roses,
Hiding from all men's eyes save his who loves
To see how by the other each reposes,
Even as a sister by her sister's side.
The next riddle has the answer Knowledge and Power, and the third Love. Turandot doesn’t want the prince to guess correctly, and seems to hold back the third riddle in hopes that she can prevent this from happening. When the prince solves the third riddle, she immediately begs her father for more time to devise an appropriate rematch, and swears to die rather than marry the prince. The prince’s response here doesn’t differ much from that in Puccini’s opera. But Turandot, in the following scene, shows aspects of her character which we do not see in the opera. She talks of strange new feelings, and says [she seems] to shiver both with heat and frost[....]” She also gives a good reason for hating the prince and the life ahead of them both:
[Men are] treacherous: pretending love
Until they have the maiden in their toils;
But when they have their will, they laugh at us,
Dallying with now this woman and now that;
Nor is there any slave too base for them,
Nor any harlot at too low a price.
One of her retainers goes to find the name. Turandot debates with herself: how she will feel to see him defeated, and how he treated her when he had beaten her riddles (no less proudly). Her pity and logic mediate some of her vehemence, but the scene ends with her desperate hope that the name can be found which will spare her. The retainer, Adelma, finds out the name, and Turandot appears at the court the next day with the name. The prince, defeated, prepares to stab himself, and this display of his integrity moves Turandot to offer herself voluntarily. She accepts him as husband because he was fair enough to follow through with his counteroffer. This is a Turandot whose resolve is moved by her reason, and who completely loses her fear and loathing of the choice ahead of her. Her faith in mankind, and men, is restored by the prince’s integrity. Puccini’s Turandot never reaches that conclusion, at least not out loud. If she experiences a conversion, as does Gozzi’s, there is no explanation of why, only her feelings as she completely reverses course and accepts the Prince.
Schiller’s Turandot
Already, by Schiller’s adaptation of Turandot, many of the side plots and details are streamlined. The plot stays much along the same lines, but Turandot’s reasons for refusing to marry are quite different. In keeping with Schiller’s passionate devotion to freedom, Turandot makes the case that her beauty is “heaven’s gift” and that she deserves the same freedom that all men and animals have by nature. She longs to remain virgin and free. The Prince, in turn, accepts her feelings, but asks her not to condemn him because he desires to try for her hand, as this is his own free choice. Her first riddle is “a year,” and her second “an eye,” which she describes as freely given to all. The third riddle is “the plow,” whose life changing powers have not yet started any war. These riddles are not empirical like Gozzi’s, or revealing like Puccini’s. They bear in their ordinary and human subjects the unique stamp of Schiller’s egalitarian ideals of freedom. Turandot in the end bestows herself on the victorious Calaf in the same way, insisting that her heart was his when she first saw him. This is an element not shared by either of the other stories. Turandot’s pity turned to love has more in common with Bulfinch’s Atalanta than with Puccini’s ice-princess.
Turandot: the character
With whom does the audience identify and sympathize in these different versions? Puccini’s princess is hard to love but easy to desire. Her “gelo” (ice) does inspire fire in the hearts of her suitors, and draws us all to her because she is so cold, so calculating, and so superhuman in her determination, fear and hate. But it is very hard to feel sorry for her, because Adami and Simoni have left out all the scenes which in Schiller and Gozzi display the reasonable side of the princess. She is calculating, but hardly reasonable. The quality of metis is a recurring feature in the archetypes Turandot exemplifies, and not one which classical or Romantic authors are happy to find in a woman. Rather, the intelligence and fearlessness which Turandot and Atalanta have makes them desirable – as equals in men’s skills such as running or riddles – but fearsome, as they wield power over men’s lives, and therefore a dreadful force to be eliminated or subdued. This is not necessarily an attitude embraced by modern men or critics, but it features prominently in the reception of Turandot in her many settings. She must be silenced, disarmed, and married to keep others safe.
Gozzi’s Turandot is much more human. She is certainly flawed, very proud, and unreasoning in her refusal to wed and then specifically to wed the man she promised herself to as prize. But her logical acceptance of his honest surrender to her demands shows that she is a thinking and feeling person, and certainly seems to grow during the conclusion of the play, even if it seems a bit stilted, and the overall moral perhaps a bit misogynist.
Schiller’s Turandot is the most upright and philosophical of the three. She desires freedom and insists on it not because of her royal blood, but almost regardless of it: she believes that she has the same right to freedom as all others. Her prince feels the same universal right in his quest to win her hand. It is interesting that Gozzi’s princess submits to marriage because of a logical appeal, and that Schiller’s claims that love at first sight moved her to eventual submission.
Puccini’s Turandot is by far the most commonly read today, and the modern conception of her character is greatly colored by Puccini’s icy tones. This Turandot, emphasizing the man-hating and man-killing side of the princess, draws our attention to the mystique of both this princess and the idealized woman who we fear but desire. Her desire to flee men’s grasp has been interpreted as a homosexual orientation as opposed to an anti-male agenda, and this interpretation is particularly interesting in light of Turandot’s story being presented entirely by male writers. The authors’ collective fascination with the deadly beauty reflects typical attitudes towards women, especially those women who are off-limits through personal choice. To read Turandot as a lesbian, who legitimately feels no desire for the Prince, is to reject the conclusion of Schiller’s play and Puccini’s opera as heteronormative compliance, and to see Gozzi’s ending as an alternative solution to the traditional format of marriage – a social contract between equals rather than a bride price. Turandot may never have been consciously conceived as a lesbian by those who “wrote” her, but the interpretation is certainly grounded in solid potential.
However we read Turandot – sympathetically or not – the “femme fatale” princess of ice is indeed a mystery wrapped in an enigma. From Gozzi’s orientalist tradition through Schiller’s Enlightenment mindset, to Puccini’s lavish stage, the story keeps us on the edge of our seats culturally and dramatically, and reflects several darker sides to the fairy tale of the foreign prince and the Princess of ice.
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