Turandot (Gozzi)

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For other uses, see Turandot (disambiguation).

Carlo Gozzi wrote Turandot (1762) for the Commedia dell'arte. The play provides the general story for the homonymous opera by Puccini, (and also the earlier work by Busoni), although it was Friedrich Schiller’s adaptation Turandot, Prinzessin von China (1801) on which Puccini[citation needed] based his work. The plot of Turandot in Schiller's version is similar to Gozzi's, but there are very important differences that characterize each play. The twentieth-century dramatist Bertolt Brecht also adapted Gozzi's play, as Turandot, or the Whitewashers' Congress (1953-4).

Gozzi’s play has a “light, sarcastic tone” whereas Schiller transforms it into a symbolic epic with an idealised moral attitude. Whilst the one's focus remains on the comical, satirical aspect, the other alters the whole mood of the play, according to Romantic philosophy (which correlates with his own belief stated in On Naive and Sentimental Poetry), and puts together both dramatic and comical attributes. Gozzi, although he also uses both elements, puts them side by side as independent parts; Schiller combines them and makes them the result of each other. This interaction of dramatic and comical, their interdependence and the fact of their being equally matched, embodies the Romantic principle of universalism. One major topic in German Romanticism is the idea(l) of universal poetry, a poetry that incorporates every aspect of art ("rhetoric" and "philosophy"), literature ("poetry and prose") and even life ("genius and criticism"). It expresses the striving for the ideal, i.e. something complete (quotes taken from Friedrich Schlegel's Athenaeum Fragments - see external links). This ideal of a complete poetry also shows in Schlegel's formulation of Transcendental Poetry, which combines the real with the ideal, and creates a new "whole" which is better and more than the simple addition of the aforesaid.

[edit] Character

Gozzi’s main character, Turandot, seems to act out of a mood and cruelty whereas Schiller’s princess is a person who resolutely follows her moral and ethical attitude. This is how Schiller generally creates his tragical heroines (cf. Maria Stuart, The Maid of Orleans), who consistently follow their ideals - even to death. Also prince Calaf, who is a kind of lost soul and philanderer in Gozzi’s version, becomes a kind lover who surrenders to his deep and true love for Turandot.

The classical commedia dell’arte characters in the play, especially Pantalone and Brighella, whose language is rather colloquial in Gozzi’s version, lose their naïve nature and even speak in well-formed verses in Schiller’s work; they also contribute to the more severe and moralistic atmosphere in Schiller’s adaptation.

However, the biggest difference shows in the character of Turandot. She embodies Schiller’s high ideal of beauty and, as almost all of his heroines, fights for her “inner” freedom. Although she is superficially free, her heart is not. She demonstrates the fight between must and will, thought and feeling, and pride and love.

Feeling "forced" to hate the prince as he is a "man" - and she feels obliged to take revenge on all men for the suppression of women- Turandot is torn between her "duty" and the love she feels for Calaf. At the end, love defeats pride: although Turandot thought she was held in captivity by men and thus never wanted to submit to men’s rule, the key to her freedom is the surrender to love, i.e. to the man she loves. After all, Turandot becomes the epitome of "beauty"” in Schiller's sense, since for him, as stated in On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in a Series of Letters, beauty is defined as the "...aesthetic unity of thought and feeling, of contemplation and sensation, of reason and intuition, of activity and passivity, of form and matter. The attainment of this unity enables human nature to be realized and fulfilled. Beauty (or aesthetic unity) may lead to truth (or logical unity). However, when truth is perceived, feeling may follow thought, or thought may follow feeling." (189) This again correlates with the Universalist principle. Thus Turandot becomes a character who achieves the highest ideal of freedom and beauty, and therefore can be seen as a typical idealistic romantic figure (for further details see German Idealism).

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