Puccini scores - analysis of aria 'Nessun Dorma'

National Review, July 23, 1990 by Frank Johnson

LONDON-We realize here that one of the points on which Americans differ from the rest of the human race is that they are not interested in the World Cup. This will make the next World Cup, in four years' time, the oddest in the competition's history. It is to be held in the United States. But one of the similarities between you and the rest of us is that we all like a good tune. And on BBC television a good tune has dominated the World Cup.

Italy is the venue for the World Cup at present raging. The British Broadcasting Corporation, as a sort of warning signal at the beginning and end of all matches, has broadcast a recording by perhaps the greatest living Italian, Pavarotti, of the aria Nessun Dorma" ("Let No One Sleep") from Puccini's opera Turandot. The effect on the British public has been devastating. People who have never before bought a classical" disc are flocking to record shops, asking for such works as Nessie Duma?' or just The Official World Cup Song."

The version chosen by the BBC is from the complete Turandot which Pavarotti recorded 18 years ago with Joan Sutherland. His record company has put it out as a single and it has reached number two in the hit parade-needless to say, the first operatic recording to achieve that distinction. But plenty of people are leaving those record shops with the complete recording, or with a recital disc in which the aria is one of many. Gossip says that Pavarotti's rival, Domingo, is Serious." His record company is publicizing his three versions.

It may be surprising that the BBC should have chosen Nessun Dorma" to advertise soccer. But the public's response is not. I would make big claims for "Nessun Dorma." I believe it to be the last great tune ever written. Moreover, its emergence into the world in 1926 ended a phase of musical history that had lasted for two hundred years and started another-although no one realized it at the time.

CLAIMING "Nessun Dorma" as the last great tune is not to deny quality to much of what came later: "Lili Marlene" (1939), say, or Cole Porter's Night and Day" (1932), or Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose" (1946). They, and plenty more, are good tunes-beautiful, even. But they are not great. They do not move and stir in the way that "Nessun Dorma" does. They would not propel the masses toward the sort of record shops in which they had not previously set foot.

To achieve that, a great operatic composer is needed. More specifically, an operatic composer from the line that stretches from Handel through Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi to Puccini. Some of those composers were far greater than the others. No one suggests that Puccini was the equal of Mozart. But they all had one thing in common. They could write tunes that appealed to a vast number of people in the way that "Nessun Dorma" does.

Puccini was the last one who was given an opportunity to do it, and "Nessun Dorma" was the last time he did so. The aria comes at the start of Turandot's last act. The cruel Chinese princess Turandot has issued an order to all the city: because the hitherto-unknown name of a certain prince must be discovered by daybreak, no one may sleep. In a moonlit garden, the prince hears the offstage populace's repeated cry of "Nessun dorma!" He takes up the phrase, and spins the melody with which Pavarotti seems to have entranced the British soccer-watching public.

The aria ends with a sustained top B-Puccini's score does not specify that it be sustained but tenors rightly think it is expected of them-on the word "Vincero!" ("I shall win!"). The prince is confident that at daybreak his name will remain unknown. After that aria, Puccini wrote about half-anhour's more music for Turandot. Then, at Brussels, on November 29, 1924, he died of cancer, aged 66, with the opera unfinished.

It was completed, with the help of Puccini's sketches, by his pupil Alfano. But at the premiere at La Scala, Milan, on April 25, 1926, the performance ended on the last note which Puccini committed to the score. The conductor, Toscanini, then turned and addressed the audience. Accounts differ as to his exact words. According to one report they were: "Here, at this point, Giacomo Puccini broke off his work. Death on this occasion was stronger than art." Another report has him saying: At this point, the maestro laid down his pen."

BUT NO ONE in the audience could have realized the full significance of that moment. It was the end of popular opera. Turandot is the only opera written these last 65 years with so much as a single phrase which any television executive would risk as the signature tune for the World Cup.

Puccini's contemporary Richard Strauss (1864-1949) had entered the popular repertory with Der Rosenkavalier. But that was in 1911. As an example of popular melody, Straussians would offer his Arabella (1933), or perhaps just a couple of duets in it. But even they would not expect anything in Arabella to compete for the crowds with "Nessun Dorma." Britten's Peter Grimes (1945) has a foothold-which I suspect is shopping-in the popular repertory. But I cannot think of any passages in that work which even its most tenacious admirers would put in for the World Cup.