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
Robert Alfano meetings and conferences for OSA and SPIE, and later co-chairing many optical imaging conferences with Britton Chance, whereby he introduced young scientists and engineers to biomedical optics, and attracted other researchers to the field. In addition to his faculty position as a Distinguished Professor at the City College and Graduate School of New York, Alfano has held, or currently holds, a number of directorship positions: Alfano notes that he attended college mainly because his father thought it was important (though his parents hadn't had such advantage). Alfano chose Fairleigh Dickinson University because it was close to his childhood home in