Turandot Turandot Turandot (; ; ) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, completed by Franco Alfano, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text "Turandot" (1762) by Count Carlo Gozzi. The original story is based on one of the seven stories in the epic "Haft Peykar" ("The Seven Beauties"), a work of 12th-century Persian poet Nizami. Nizami aligned the seven stories with the
Enrico Alfano the Italian newspaper "La Stampa", Alfano did spent six or seven years in prison, where he earned his initiation as a "camorrista", which gave him the "right" to demand a "tangente", protection money, from the merchants in the neighbourhood he controlled. Both sources agree that Alfano imposed his position when he defeated the Camorra head, the "capintesta" Totonno" 'o Pappagallo" (The Parrot) – so-named for his beak parrot nose – in a "zumpata" – a kind of ritual initiation knife duel – despite the fact that his adversary sent his Mastino dog to attack Alfano. The conflict started when "Pappagallo"