Turandot To obtain permission to marry her, a suitor has to solve three riddles; any wrong answer results in death. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot still refuses to marry him. He offers her a way out: if she is able to learn his name before dawn the next day, then at daybreak he will die. In the original story by Nizami, the princess sets four conditions. The first is "a good name and good deeds", and then the three challenges. The opera was unfinished at the time of Puccini's death in 1924, and was completed by Franco Alfano in 1926.
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.