FRANCO ALFANO: TRASCENDING TURANDOT

"The man Turandot finished", Franco Alfano (Naples 1875 - San Remo 1954) - obliged to accept the thankless task of completing Puccini's final opera - remains one of the most undervalued composers.

His Tolstoy-based opera Resurrezione was hugely successful. His musical creed expresses a positive purification and regeneration of man's essential goodness, epitomized as a redemption or transfiguration proceeding "from darkness toward light."

Each facet of Alfano's legacy recquires its own individual approach: the ecletic language of the ultra-Italianate verismo of Resurrezione, the almost esoteric exoticism of La Leggenda di Sakùntala, the aristocratically restrained French vein dominating Cyrano de Bergerac.