Franco Alfano nine months on the following concluding duet and at his death had left behind a whole ream of sketches... Alfano had to reconstruct...according to his best assessment...and with his imagination and magnifying glass" since Puccini's material "had not really been legible." "Alfano's reputation has also suffered [IC:along with Mascagni], understandably, because of his willingness to associate himself closely with Mussolini's Fascist government." Alex Ross, in "The New Yorker", notes that a new ending of "Turandot" composed by Luciano Berio premiered in 2002 is preferred by some critics for making a more satisfactory resolution of Turandot's change of heart, and of
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.