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
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