Giacomo Puccini remained popular. "Turandot", Puccini's final opera, was left unfinished, and the last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano based on the composer's sketches. The libretto for "Turandot" was based on a play of the same name by Carlo Gozzi. The music of the opera is heavily inflected with pentatonic motifs, intended to produce an Asiatic flavor to the music. Unlike "La fanciulla", "Turandot" contains a number of memorable stand-alone arias, among them "Nessun dorma". The libretto of "Edgar" was a significant factor in the failure of that opera. Thereafter, especially throughout his middle and late career, Puccini was extremely
Messa (Puccini) in 1878 and was initially conceived by Puccini as a self-contained work. Puccini never published the full manuscript of the "Messa", and although well received at the time, it was not performed again until 1952 (first in Chicago and then in Naples). However, he re-used some of its themes in other works, such as the Agnus Dei in his opera "Manon Lescaut" and the Kyrie in "Edgar". At the end of World War II, Fr. Dante Del Fiorentino purchased an old copy of the manuscript of the Messa from the Vandini family in Lucca, imagining it was the original score.