Puccini left the opera unfinished at the time of his death in 1924 Franco Alfano completed it in 1926. Up to eight of the musical themes in Turandot appear to be based on traditional Chinese music and anthems, and the melody of a Chinese song ' Mò Li Hūa (茉莉花)', or 'Jasmine', became a motif for the princess. As with Madama Butterfly, Puccini strove for a semblance of authenticity (at least to Western ears) by integrating music from the region. In the original story by Nizami, the princess sets four conditions: firstly 'a good name and good deeds', and then the three challenges. He offers her a way out: if she is able to guess his name before dawn the next day, he will accept death. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot refuses to marry him. Any single wrong answer will result in the suitor's execution. In order to obtain permission to marry her, a suitor must solve three riddles.

It involves Prince Calaf, who falls in love with the cold Princess Turandot. The opera's version of the story is set in China. The name of the opera is based on Turan-Dokht (daughter of Turan), which is a name frequently used in Persian poetry for Central Asian princesses. In the first line of the story, the protagonist is identified as a Russian princess. This particular narrative is the story of Tuesday, as told to the king of Iran, Bahram V ( r. 420–438), by his companion of the red dome, associated with Mars. Nizami aligned his seven stories with the seven days of the week, the seven colors, and the seven planets known in his era. The original story is one of the seven stories in the epic Haft Peykar-a work by twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami ( c. Though Puccini first became interested in the subject matter when reading Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation, he based his work more closely on the earlier play Turandot (1762) by Count Carlo Gozzi. Turandot 's best-known aria is ' Nessun dorma', which became globally popular in the 1990s following Luciano Pavarotti's performance of it for the 1990 FIFA World Cup. Turandot ( Italian: ( listen) see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.

Puccini opera settings