What's the story ‘Nessun dorma’, one of the most famous of all operatic arias, means ‘none shall sleep’. Why is no one sleeping in imperial Peking? Because they’re simply petrified. Puccini’s final opera is an erotic nightmare, where men’s heads are sliced off after sundown. Anyone who wants to marry icy princess Turandot must answer three riddles; fail and you die. Peking runs with blood, but Prince Calaf is mesmerised by Turandot, and decides to try his chances. Amazingly, he succeeds, but gives Turandot a get-out clause: guessing his name. Turandot tries to torture the answer from the slave-girl Liù, who is devoted to Calaf and dies to protect him. Only when Calaf astonishes Turandot by kissing her is she ready to announce that his name is – love.

Why should we care? Turandot is set in a fantasia of imperial China – a place of ritual, beauty and pain. The moon hangs in the sky like a severed head, casting its chilly silver gleam. No wonder Giacomo Puccini’s final opera feels like a hypnotic dream play. It’s not quite a love story, because Turandot and Calaf’s single-mindedness is almost inhuman. Turandot’s impenetrable refusal is madly attractive to suitors who batter against her like helpless flies. Working in the great age of psychoanalysis, Puccini puts Turandot on the couch and imagines what might make such an icy woman unbend. His solution is unsettling – Calaf’s last-minute embrace is more like an act of brute violence than a butterfly kiss, and love explodes into Turandot’s life like a bomb. Although Calaf’s fire meets Turandot’s ice, the slave-girl Liù is a sweetly sacrificial lover. ‘They say that emotionalism is a sign of weakness,’ said Puccini (1858-1924), ‘but I like to be weak!’ Audiences thrill to his full-throttle passions and commitment to emotion. Puccini, who died just before completing the opera, invented the character of bruised and broken Liù to teach the others something about unselfish love, without riddles and conditions.

What does it sound like? There is something eerily compelling about an operatic character who refuses to sing. Turandot remains silent for the entire first act, an inaccessible riddle who takes her own time. When we do finally hear her voice, it throws out daunting vocal leaps like spears, as Turandot justifies her cruelty as vengeance for a dead ancestor in the imperious, menacing aria ‘In questa reggia’. Puccini was inspired by a Chinese music box belonging to an Italian diplomat, especially for the grand ceremonial scenes, where a tune called ‘Moo-Lee-Wha’ accompanies the princess’s appearances. Turandot demands the largest orchestra of any Puccini opera, and innovative choruses weep and quiver through his blood-soaked Peking. We even hear the ghostly voices of Turandot’s unsuccessful suitors, just one of the mysterious offstage choruses that seem to carry fear on the wind. An offstage female chorus, along with a mellow cello, also helps soften Calaf’s ardent ‘Nessun dorma,’ the first indication that a thaw is coming.

Other stuff Puccini died of throat cancer before he could complete the closing duet between Turandot and Calaf. A younger Italian composer, Franco Alfano, completed the opera, working from Puccini’s sketches. At the first performance in Milan in 1926, the conductor Arturo Toscanini laid down his baton after Liù’s suicide, saying ‘At this point the maestro died.’ The curtain fell in tribute to Puccini. The opera is based on Carlo Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte play (1762), which is itself based on an oriental folktale. Gozzi’s play had already been set to music at least a dozen times before Puccini. Puccini and his librettists, Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, studied Chinese music and culture while working on the opera. Puccini’s servant Doria, who was devoted to the composer, committed suicide after Elvira, the composer’s jealous wife, sacked her and publicly accused her of sleeping with him. Did this miserable episode influence the characters of gentle Liù and implacable Turandot? The answers to the princess’ three riddles, by the way, are ‘Hope’, ‘Blood’ and ‘Turandot’.

Exploring further - links Turandot (English National Opera guide) provides background articles plus the libretto. The Last Emperor (1987), a film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which stunningly recreates imperial Peking. Puccini by Mosco Carner (Duckworth), a magisterial biography of the composer.