"IN BOCCA AL LUPO!"
("Into the mouth of the wolf!")

I belong to one of the smallest, most esoteric support groups in all of music history: the Turandot Completion Survivors Club! Our membership is extremely small, and we've never had a single meeting, but we're all bound by the same challenging experience—trying to fashion a suitable ending to Giacomo Puccini's final opera. I'll let our founding member, Franco Alfano, explain:

"Here I am at work; the difficult work of choosing and creating, of patching, of chiseling. To choose from the sketched manuscript materials that which He perhaps would have omitted—and turn it into and present it as... presentable. To throw out that which He would have certainly rejected. Cut here, develop there... and then... to create ex-novo that which doesn’t exist. And not be too Alfano!"

- August 6, 1925

Poor Alfano. He suffered the most. His first completion (known as Alfano I) was rejected by none other than Arturo Toscanini, who forced him to use every scrap of music that Puccini had left on paper, whether good or not. His revised version (Alfano II) didn't fare much better; Toscanini refused to perform it on opening night, instead simply stopping the music midway through the third act, turning to the audience and saying "Here the maestro laid down his pen."

Indeed, every single one of us who has attempted the task have all faced the same challenges and criticisms. We're all immediately and understandably compared to The Great Puccini. We're expected to make use of as much of Puccini's leftover material as possible—even though we all know, as composers, that only a small fraction of the ideas that anyone writes in their sketchbook are ever actually meant to see the light of day. And then there's the dilemma about what stylistic approach one should take while finishing His opera: if we try to sound like Puccini, we're accused of pastiche. If we maintain our own distinct musical voices, we're told that we don't sound like Puccini. And finally, there's a sizable contingent who consider any attempt to finish His work the utmost musical blasphemy, and instead prefer Toscanini's approach, which is to simply end the show in the middle of the third act.

To borrow a saying from the opera world, writing an ending to Turandot is indeed putting yourself into the mouth of the wolf. But if you're lucky enough to be offered the challenge, it's an honor that's impossible to turn down.

COMPOSITIONAL STYLE

To answer the question of whether to try to sound like Puccini, or whether to maintain one's own artistic voice, I fell squarely in the latter camp.

First off, composers have a specific voice that we compose in, and we don't compromise on that. After all, Franco Alfano composed his ending in his own style. Luciano Berio did as well. So why shouldn't I?

Secondly, I don't think I could sound like pure Puccini even if I tried. Every composer makes decisions on what notes to write based on the accumulation of their instinct, training, life experiences, and musical desires. That's why we all write music differently. I have a musical compass that guides me in choosing what notes to write down that's mine alone, and I can't get rid of it.

Therefore everything you hear in my Turandot completion is not me trying to sound like Puccini—but instead, is just my own style; a fact that should be pretty clear to fans of my other works like "To Shiver the Sky". But I might also say that my own compositional style isn't necessarily foreign-sounding to those who love Puccini's Romantic melodicism. After all, I cut my teeth on the scoring stages of Hollywood, mentored by composers who carried forth the sound of the Golden Age of Hollywood—a tradition that owes a foundational debt to Romantic opera composers like Puccini, Wagner, and Richard Strauss.

One aspect of my style—and indeed, one of the things that I enjoy doing the most—is motivic development. In layman's terms, that means taking melodies, rearranging them to suit different dramatic moments, and repeating (and often combining) them for maximum effect. And here's where I had a wealth of source material to work with. Puccini left a few ideas in his notebooks that were golden, and I was happy to write full pieces based on them (as opposed to Alfano, who would often use Puccini's idea once, and then discard it). Secondly, there were some great motivic ideas from the portion of the opera that he had completed: "Nessun Dorma" of course, but also the opening "Axe motif", Turandot's melody from Act II "Mai nessun m'avrà", and my personal favorite, that sweeping opening scene "Indietro cano" (which is truly one of my favorite bits of musical drama). To see how I interpolated all this material into my ending, and even drew on some other Puccinian motivic cells to fashion my own new melodies, watch this score video:

DEVELOPING MY OWN OPERA STYLE

As I'd mentioned before, this was my very first opera commission, and so there were technical aspects of writing opera that I had to learn on the job. Even though musically I just did what I usually do, I still had to evolve a little bit to suit the medium.

The first thing I had to do was gain a deeper understanding of writing for opera singers. The roles of Turandot and Calàf are particularly demanding for singers, and my initial pass did not give them enough time to rest. Therefore when I re-approached my ending after the Washington National Opera run, I was able to incorporate some helpful feedback from the cast—specifically Ewa Plonka (Turandot) and Jon Burton (Calàf)—that addressed these issues for future performances.

Secondly, I was actually able to develop my own personal philosophy when it came to the practicalities of writing opera, which is this: make your music as intuitive as possible for the singers, orchestra, and conductor. If your music is easy to learn, easy to sing, easy to count when resting, and easy for performers to come in confidently on their entrances, then you allow your performers to devote their headspace to actually performing your music.

I'm already one to naturally rely heavily on melody, which means that a lot of my music is written in an approachable and intuitive way for performers and audience alike. But the more I can make things unfold in their most logical way, the better. Things like key relationships have to be smooth, so singers can find their entry notes as cleanly as possible. Metering has to make intuitive sense, and if it varies, needs to vary in predictable ways. Orchestration and counterpoint have to be clear, and not full of unnecessary distraction. Having a strong, clearly articulated melody in the orchestra helps singers to get their bearings; same with sparks and punches of orchestral color, which act as auditory signposts when things get deafening on stage.

Opera is unlike any other form of music that I've written in that you can't rely on the fact that anyone's watching the conductor, as you have no idea which direction they're facing on stage. You have to make your music as easy as possible for everyone to perform in sync based solely on auditory clues.

And if you do your job right, in theory, you've just freed up your singers to do what they do best—and that is to sing. I don't want anyone on stage straining to hear when they come in, or counting an arbitrary number of rests before they make their entrance, unsupported by the orchestra. I want everyone devoting 100% of their headspace to giving a great performance.

ORCHESTRAL COLOR

There were certain aspects of Puccini's orchestration that I made a conscientious decision not to incorporate—and this is where we get into some slightly complicated cultural conversations.

Let me say first of all, that as a Chinese American, I absolutely love everything that Puccini did with Chinese music. His incorporation of Chinese melodies was skillfully and beautifully done. My only quibbles, really, were the things that were perhaps out of his control, and perhaps aged in ways he had not intended: for example, the names of the characters Ping, Pang, and Pong are just a little annoying, because every Asian kid in the 90s had their last name made fun of in such a manner.

Similarly, Puccini had some very clever use of orchestral color that a hundred years ago were fresh and exotic, but due to a century of pop-culture perversion, just sound a little grating to me now. For example, in the opening scene, the Mandarin proclaims Turandot's decree to the sound of gongs and clacking xylophones. In Puccini's time that may have been a novel bit of orchestral color, but sadly, that has different connotations for me now. When I hear it, I can't help but think back on the era of film scoring that handled things in fairly unsubtle ways: e.g. James Bond lands on an island in Thailand, and suddenly you hear all sorts of Asian cliches with xylophones and gongs.

Again, I don't fault Puccini for this, and I realize he lived in an era where Asian culture was novel and exerted a lot of influence on European aesthetics, often in wonderful ways (e.g. Debussy). I certainly, in my video game scoring work, have leaned on instruments, scales, and rhythms from outside the Western tradition, oftentimes in collaboration with the developers who ask for such things, but often to fit my own musical interests. But when it came time for me to write my completion of Turandot, I simply was not interested in continuing the Chinoiserie in my ending.

After all, the vision for the ending that my librettist Susan Soon He Stanton and I shared, was that it should be transformative—that Calàf and Turandot were both transfigured by the end of the third act, and that the love they discover for one another is pure and universal. In a way, we wanted to take the story out of Ancient China, and so dropping the exotic orchestrations seemed to be the appropriate thing to do.

Similarly, Puccini relied on a system of harmonic tinta (scales) for his characters, that would often imbue those characters with certain stereotypical traits. For example, the character of Liù almost always sings in a pentatonic mode, to convey some sort of purity of character associated with her Chinese-ness. In contrast, Turandot had more complex harmonies to convey a sort of mystery and exoticism, while Calàf was given a broad-strokes Eurocentric musical language to convey his heroism (which, in the context of turn-of-the-century Imperialism, grates a little).

I didn't really feel like continuing any of that, to be honest—not because it offends me terribly, but simply because I don't really see the world that way. So I just said, let's just take them all out of the realm of exoticism and tell a love story that's universal.

"POI TRISTANO" EASTER EGG

I'm a big fan of easter eggs in my music. This is partly because composing for me is a fun activity, and so often to keep things amusing for myself, I'll put secret messages into my scores. Sometimes they're almost impossible to find, buried in the fabric of the music through pitch names or morse code. Sometimes they're more obvious, like callbacks to other movements in a multi-movement piece ("Calling All Dawns" did this a lot). And sometimes they're there as a nod to those who know more about the context of the piece that they're listening to.

The 'Liebestod' moment in my ending is one such easter egg. As we know, Puccini famously scribbled the words 'Poi Tristano' in his sketches, as a shorthand for saying that the only way that he could foresee a satisfactory ending to the third act is if he could compose the greatest love duet ever: one with the same sweep and majesty as the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. So from a very early point in the creative process, I knew I wanted to hide a little easter egg as a nod to this bit of Puccinian lore.

The approach that Susan and I took, however, does not rely on a single sweeping love duet that convinces through music that Calàf and Turandot are genuinely in love with each other. Rather, it relies on a series of very savvy plot points that create a narrative where each character reveals to the other their vulnerabilities, and in so doing, can come to love each other in a more realistic manner. And so (thankfully) I didn't have the opportunity to try to write the greatest love duet known to humankind.

But I still wanted to make that nod to Wagner, especially for those steeped in the history of Turandot and Puccini's final wishes. Fortunately, in doing all the preparatory research that I did, I came across a solution: transforming the Ax Motif, the musical logo of Turandot's cruelty, into a Liebestod-like moment where she kisses Calàf.

I can't take credit for this idea. This came from Deborah Burton, noted Puccini scholar, whose book 'Recondite Harmony: Essays on Puccini's Operas' was the basis for much of my research. She was the one who drew a parallel between the Ax Motif and the Liebesruhe motif in Tristan. (Deborah and I have actually become pretty chummy since this project began; she flew out to Washington D.C. for the premiere of Turandot, and has a new book coming out called the The Finales of Turandot: Puccini's Last Act, where she actually devotes the better part of a chapter to my ending. She's also the one who shared with me the Alfano quote above, thinking I might find his struggles relatable.)

I thought it was a brilliant idea, however, and since I was taking a motivic development approach to my ending, what better way to show that Turandot has transformed than to take her signature motif of cruelty, and transform it into a soaring love theme? And for those audience members who were already aware of Puccini's "Poi Tristano" wishes, why not simultaneously give them that easter egg of a Liebestod-esque climactic kiss?

Thanks Deborah, I owe you one!

OUR SUPPORT GROUP

Deborah, by the way, has written her own Turandot finale, and I hope to be able to hear it someday, as she's the only other member of the Turandot Completion Survivor's Club that I've gotten to meet. Our ranks are already growing—in fact, only two weeks after our ending premiered, another completion by Derrick Wang premiered at Opera Delaware. Turandot is now in public domain, and I imagine there might yet be more composers after us who may take a stab at completing it. And to those who do, I say:

"CREPI DI LUPO!"
("Slay the wolf!")