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
Arturo Basile Arturo Basile Arturo Basile (January 16, 1914 – May 21, 1968) was an Italian conductor. He was known mostly for his work in the Italian operatic repertoire, especially Puccini and Verdi. Basile was born in Syracuse, Sicily. When he was 12, he studied the oboe at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin, with Franco Alfano serving as music director at the time. His teachers included Giorgio Federico Ghedini. After graduating in 1933, he took up conducting, and was leading the Orchestra Sinfonica dell' EIAR by the early 1940s. In 1946, he took first prize in a conducting competition with Tullio