Wagner succeeded in taking stories and characters of mixed historical/legendary provenance, and even of purely mythological origin, and “humanizing” them, i. e., rendering them recognizable and compelling in modern psychological terms, while still retaining the numinous quality of myth. He did so, though, with material he’d been intimate with for years, that was part of the identity-formation of his own culture and crucial to his own sense of self, not by reaching out to a culture whose very fascination was its exotic strangeness. In another direction, one can imagine Stravinsky fashioning such material into an abstract, severe formalism, as he did with some success in his Oedipus Rex (though the resulting work, however masterful, would cling, like Oedipus, to the fringe of the active canon). But Puccini was no fabulist, in either of those senses. However he might try with often-potent atmospheric effects of the long ago and far away, his music remains of its here-and-now, and of the up-close and personal. And Calaf’s downfall, morally speaking, comes early. I rather imagine that to most members of a contemporary audience—even those reading along while performers plead for their attention—it does not forcibly strike them that Liù’s fragrant, lovingly phrased “Signore, ascolta” and Calaf’s tender-sounding response, “Non piangere, Liù!” are, respectively, a raw, desperate plea for mercy and a cold-blooded refusal of same, the latter rendered even more objectionable by its tone of teary compassion. But that is the case, and both the hero’s father and the devoted slave girl who has cared for him over countless miles of outcast wanderings will indeed die on “the road of exile” if Calaf does not break the hold of his compulsion-at-first-sight. He does not. This is where we are meant to understand that the spell is too strong, and Calaf helpless to resist. But, though Puccini’s music of bewitchment (“O divina bellezza, o meraviglia!“, etc.) is compelling and cleverly layered onto the funereal music for the condemned Prince of Persia’s procession, and though yes, yes, the moon is full and we’re told that her perfume fills the air, none of this persuades us that those two lives can be tossed away. Nor does the music written to exploit the hero’s romantic tenor voice lead us to believe that he is incapable of resistance. I have often wondered if the labored feel of the subsequent act-ending ensemble tells us that Puccini really didn’t buy it, either.

Calaf has one more chance at redemption. As the torture of Liù commences, he can spare her by revealing his name, thus putting himself at the mercy of his chosen lady. He would do this with defiant pride, of course—”I am Calaf, son of Timur and Prince of Tartary!”, as he in fact does later in the final duet—but in the act of kneeling before her (what a moment for choral response!). In my alternative ending to the opera, Turandot clears the vast garden for an interview with the no-longer Unknown Prince, for the purpose of bringing about the ending she truly desires. The music holds us in suspense, as the Puccini of Tosca and Il Tabarro knew well how to do, but the route to a happy ending is now open, one in which Turandot, in full possession of herself, her powers, and the name, chooses love over death. And how much more emotionally complex that scene could have been, a closer kin to the final scene it recalls, that of Siegfried. That model is fairly clear, I think: the hero who first dismisses the father (very well, the grandfather in Siegfried’s case), then penetrates the sacred barrier (a circle of fire; a carapace of ice) as only the chosen hero may, awakens the maiden to her own femininity and the surrender of her divine power. With that model followed farther, Turandot must wrestle with herself as Brünnhilde does, with her terror at the surrender of her invulnerability and unchallenged power, and of her fantasy as avenger of Lo-u-ling. And Calaf must woo with manly sensitivity and persuasion, not with force. Eva Turner, recognizing that Turandot’s cruelty springs from her fear, said that “She knows instinctively that she has met her match, a man for whom she has a real affinity . . . pre-ordained and inescapable.” So she must find her way to him, of her free will. The hero conquers the obstacles, not the lady.