Although without surpassing the popular appeal of Brindisi from La Traviata or La donna è mobile from Rigoletto, the aria Nessun Dorma from the opera Turandot by Puccini has lately become the workhorse of aspiring celebrities in every America's got talent contest held anywhere in the Western world.
The modern popularity of the piece is mainly due to the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti who, despite rarely performing it on stage, from a 1972 recording accompanying the coverage of the 1990 World Cup soccer championship in Italy, turned it into the famous aria with which non-professional singers try to win the main prize and, subsequently, be launched to fortuitous stardom.
Turandot
The aria belongs to the third and last act of Turandot, the last work that Giacomo Puccini approached and left unfinished because he died while working precisely in the third act. For its posthumous premiere, in April 1926, the conductor Arturo Toscanini stopped the work at the last bar written by Puccini and, addressing the audience, murmured "here the maestro died".
The work was completed by the composer Franco Alfano. Still, Puccini had already written the famous aria, entrusted to the co-star, Calaf, the prince whose name is unknown to Turandot, the protagonist.
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| Giacomo Puccini (1858 - 1924) |
The play is set in Peking, a millenary China. Princess Turandot, as beautiful as cold and distant, has decided to behead any suitor who cannot answer to three riddles of her invention. Calaf successfully overcomes the test, but the princess backs out. Calaf proposes to Turandot that she guess his name. If she succeeds she can roll his head, if not, she must marry him.
Turandot orders that no one sleeps in Peking until she finds out the name of the daring suitor. Calaf assures that no one will be able to find out, that only Turandot will know it when he "says it over his mouth", at dawn, victorious: All'alba vinceró.
The concert version is by Luciano Pavarotti, in Los Angeles, 1994.
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