TURANDOT: Enigmas, Mysteries and Contradictions James Conlon’s pre-performance talk on Puccini’s Turandot. Listen to the full podcast here.Winston Churchill’s famous 1939 remark describing Russia might excellently serve as a description for this opera: “It is a riddle, wrapped in a {…}

The Dwarf’s tragedy is that of lost innocence. Having been brought up in the wild, he has never seen a mirror. He does not know he is misshapen. He knows only that, wherever he goes, people gather and laugh and are joyful when they see him. With his poetic and humane soul, he naively believes himself as beautiful physically as his intentions. He does not realize that those who see him are mocking him. His enemy is the mirror because it will reveal the harsh truth. From their pre- and post-Freudian perspectives, author and composer are peering into the unconscious. The answer is chilling. “Dwarf, o Dwarf…God has created all of us blind about ourselves,” Ghita cries out. Is it not perhaps better that we remain so? Contrary to the ancient Greek admonition, is it better not to know thyself?

Still’s aesthetic is one that emphasizes a straightforward and direct contact with the common person in all of us. He rearticulated a famous phrase of Giacomo Puccini, “I write operas about the tragedies of little souls.” (In my mind, I can even hear the distant strains of that Italian operatic giant in the American composer’s music.) Still has a moral cosmology, a sense of morality, of right and wrong, of fairness.

Mozart’s The Magic Flute is amongst the world’s most popular and beloved operas, written by one of its most adored composers. A pseudo fairy tale, its invented mythology appeals to children and adults, amateur and professional musicians, philosophers and writers, casual operagoers and die-hard fans. It is immediately accessible to children, yet sufficiently profound and sophisticated to have commanded the attention of great thinkers and musicians for more than two centuries.