Turandot Puccini's publisher Tito Ricordi II decided on Alfano because his opera "La leggenda di Sakùntala" resembled "Turandot" in its setting and heavy orchestration. Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the libretto which was not considered complete even by Puccini himself. After the severe criticisms by Ricordi and the conductor Arturo Toscanini, he was forced to write a second, strictly censored version that followed Puccini's sketches more closely, to the point where he did not set some of Adami's text to music because Puccini had
Mario Puccini Mario Puccini Mario Puccini (28 June 1869, Livorno – 18 June 1920, Florence) was an Italian Post-impressionist painter who specialized in landscapes and village scenes. He was sometimes referred to as "The Italian Van Gogh". His father was a baker. He worked in his father's bakery and sketched as a hobby until his talent was noticed by Giovanni Fattori, who encouraged him to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, which he did, against parental objections, in 1884 when he was only fifteen. While there, he studied with Fattori and was influenced by the works of Silvestro Lega.