Turandot

A commedia dell'arte fable, first given at the Teatro San Samuele, Venice, on 22 January 1762, which Gozzi took from a supposedly Persian tale in François Pétis de la Croix's Les Mille et Un Jours, where the princess is Tourandocte. Schiller rewrote it in German for Weimar in 1801 and Goethe staged it, and it was probably through Schiller that Puccini came to the subject; but the words are not Schiller's. His riddles were answered by the year, the eye and the plough, and Gozzi's by the sun, the year and the lion of Venice, while Adami and Simoni wrote three of their own, answered by hope, blood and Turandot herself. Turandot's reason for refusing to marry, which the opera gives her in In questa reggia, is Gozzi's.