The Riddles Challenge
In the aria, Turandot explains that the reason the three riddles were conceived was as a test for any prince who might want to marry her. She explains that in the same palace, countless generations ago (thousands of years ago), a reigning Princess Lo-u-Ling was conquered by the King of the Tartars, raped and murdered. In particular, she dwells upon the Princess' final crying out and her moment of death at the hands of a man. Based on that memory alone and the concept of that crying out having been carried down through the many generations to Turandot herself, she resolves to avenge that death by imposing it on all men who fail in the attempt to marry her. She warns the prince that if he fails to answer any one of the three riddles, he will die.
The climax of the aria occurs with the word "grido" ("outcry" or "crying out") and clearly Turandot is reliving and personifying the last moments of her ancestor, its outrage and its long awaited vengeance.
The orchestra emphasises her ominous final couplet:-
- Straniero! Non tentar la fortuna!
- Gli enigmi sono tre, la morte una!
- Stranger! Do not tempt Fortune!
- The riddles are three, Death is one!
But Calaf returns this to her as
- No,no... gli enigmi sono tre, una รจ la vita!
- No, no... the riddles are three, Life is one!
Some of the very distinctive music which ends this aria, reappears briefly in the Act 3 duet Principessa di morte (as completed by Alfano), as Calaf finally embraces a still-reluctant Turandot.
Read more about this topic: In Questa Reggia
Famous quotes containing the words riddles and/or challenge:
“Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father ... there is not one that has more intricacies in it than this—that from the very moment the mistress of the house is brought to [child]bed, every female in it ... becomes an inch taller for it....
I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that ‘tis we who sink an inch lower.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
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