POPOLO DI PECHINO!
La legge è questa:

the lunar, Chinese Rabbit Year 2023 is approaching - New Year's day falling with the new moon on Sunday, O faccia pallida! O testa mozza! – but, just like Turandot’s finale, the ultimate, director's cut ending to this Tiger year ‘22 has yet to be writ and we are hereby all called to a collective labor of composition.

Puccini needs ALL our help to finish his unfinished business, almost a hundred years after his departure, which is also a hundred years from the death of Italian Opera.

The many of you are waiting for my Lunar Year offer to work with me, PLEASE NOTE: this is its premise; then, on Chinese New Year’s day – Sunday, Jan 22nd - the offer will follow – BUT only for those who’ll find a chiave to my stanza, the key that unlocks ’23!

AND YOU MUST READ THIS NEWSLETTER TILL THE VERY END TO GET IT!

We are all called to cooperate with poor Puccini because the Maestro had been having a hard time making up his mind about his works’ final scenes since at least 1917, with that of La Rondine, for which THREE different endings were set to (the same) music.

In one of them, Magda (after Mary Magdalene, for she is the youngest and thank God also the last descendant of the Violetta/Mimì prostitution ancestry) reasonably decides to kill herself, for a change, upon Ruggero’s abandonment (seriously?! although you MUST WATCH this clip for a gorgeous, surreal staging of it - what a classy rendition of an embarrassing plot):

In a second finale, Magda has no chance but getting back with her protector Rambaldo, who all of a sudden turns loving and tender from the cold-hearted, investment-banker-jerk he used to be in Act 1 (aaalright).

The poor female protagonist must patiently wait for the third and last finale to get a real, non-anachronistic chance and choice in life: in this ending (the sole that, comprehensibly, gets performed nowadays) Magda, upon deliberately breaking up (!!!) with her younger (!!!) lover, who wants her a wife and mother without consulting her first, carefully collects her belongings and leaves (!!!) with her maid Lisette towards the very uncertain future of women who vote and work, wear trousers, give up desired motherhoods and sometimes loved children in exchange for personal development and freedom, earning an unfair living amongst endless injustice and abuse - yay.

What about Ruggero, you ask? He is left on the floor in tears: I know, THE CRUELTY.

Well, it took Puccini and Adami (same librettist of Turandot) two idiotic endings to get there, to figure out that the times they were a-changin’.

Truth is, not only the times, were changing, but Time itself was: the former Lord of Everything had recently a-changed face for good. In fact, it had ceased existing, all together, at least when it came to very, very small worlds.

Puccini died in ’24, Quantum Physics was official born in ’25 (after being in the air for about a century); Turandot was premiered posthumous in ’26 at La Scala by Toscanini, who laid down his baton after Liù’s suicide, then turned around and said:

“Qui il Maestro è morto.”
 

Puccini knew what was going on around him at the time he left his body, taking a 300+ year old genre with him to the grave; he left notes, had it all figured out, but ultimately put the pen down: there’s no ending, nor alternate endings, to Turandot.

Let’s just think about it for a second: how can we possibly have just ONE finale or ANY GIVEN finale in the post-quantum era, once we've know for a fact that endless possibilities can be observed in the field, till that one Humpty Dumpty hits the calendar's ground?

FINALLY, a different choice than the usual V-I, love-death, neeno-neeno most predictable cadenza becomes possible for all heroes and heroines out there.

This whole operation was sponsored and made possible by Liù, through the performance of a surgical separation of the real woman from the idolized muse of Poetry that she operates with a sharp dagger on her own chest, on behalf of every other woman out there:

LA FOLLA

(fuori di scena)

Liù, bontà! Liù, dolcezza!

Dormi, oblia! Liù, Poesia!

This, is exactly where Puccini stopped writing and Opera died: on the word Poesia.

Just like Lucia-bugìa, here Liù is (was) Poesia.

There seems to be no possible Italian Opera after Poetry has left forever the body of a woman, after Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura have gotten full time a job (or now two, if their name is Sara Gamarro).

Liù, Poesia put herself to silence forever, so that we could have a future as a kind.

Now we’re left with an angry yet very real Principessa di Morte for Calaf to deal with, proven that he’s able to solve her riddles* (since the world to come does not rely on the emancipation of women, but mostly on that of men).

[*I’ve met two girls in my life deeply entangled with riddles: one being the mentioned cinta di gel daughter of Turan (who loves to formulate them); the other being a curiouser and curiouser 5 year old child, Alice (who’s good at solving them, instead),the friend of a dear friend of mine. Sadly I have no spacetime, here in this email, where I’ll stick to the former of the two girls, to tell you further about the latter, but you can refer to my good friend and somehow colleague Charles Dodgson: Professor of Mathematics and Logic at the Christ Church College in Oxford, precursor of quantum physics, relativity and black holes - topics which he took the chance to narrate in a way that even his faculty dean’s liddell daughter and personal friend could understand. You may have heard of him as Lewis Carroll - if you read anything by him you’ll figure this all out for yourselves, much better and quicker than from my words.]

Turandot it is the ultimate neverending story: WE – readers/listeners, ultimate interpreters- are Turandot and Calaf’s very children; WE - are Turandot’s endless endings.

I don’t know if you’re a fan of this modern Turandot and Calaf, too; fortunately, their maker also opted for a non-finale and ultimately discarded the two cheesy alternate endings (both available on YT, if you care to despise them). The gorgeous non-finale being:

Now… ready to unlock Rabbit Year '23?
WELL, let’s see if you can solve this little riddle of mine, first!

If you can find the final key that crowns the rima baciata,

on Chinese New Year’s day, Sunday Jan 22nd,

such word will turn into a discount coupon

to use on my website, on all session plans, to work with me!

READY?! Here goes:

Se s’apre una finestra,

Ne chiamano “Maestra!”

E non v’è giorno santo

Ch’ io non dedichi al Canto

Non è un “E, chiusa! O, aperta”
A far di me l’esperta:

Quello che m’assicura

Sta nella partitura.

Seguite il mio consiglio:

Quest’anno del coniglio

Effonderà ogni bene,

Se lo passiamo *******.

Did you find it? :)
You have till Sunday to think about it anyways, stay tuned for my next newsletter!

Much Love and a roaring tale of the Tiger you all,

La Maestra

PS: whenever you’re not sure whether Schroedinger's cat is dead or alive, just like Calaf did, try kissing him.

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