Society lives in terror of a Princess. Turandot, the
fascinating and beautiful representative of a ruling
dynasty, presides over the cruelty. Matrimony alone
seems likely to end the violence, yet no suitor has
managed to solve her riddles and win her hand. Time
and again the same scene is played out, ending in
yet another execution. Against all expectations,
Calaf, son of an exiled potentate from a far-off
country, breaks the mould. He answers her questions
and crowns his triumph by turning the tables,
extending the game of riddles and asking the
Princess a question in return.
In his early sixties Puccini was still keen to break
new ground. Society is in a state of flux, huge
changes are sweeping the art world, fresh and more
abstract forms are asserting themselves as a way of
expressing the world as we know it. Puccini spent
the last four years of his life working on TURANDOT,
basing his opera on Carlo Gozzi's fairytale play of
1762. Far from conjuring up an endearing, doll-like
China, the exotic tones of this, his richest and
most dissonant score, present us with a world
steeped in an atmosphere of inconceivable cruelty.
The resolution of the drama was to prove an
insurmountable obstacle for Puccini. Although he was
uneasy at the prospect of any opera of his ending
happily he never extricated himself from the cul de
sac into which he had maneuvered himself with the
selfless death of Liu and the imminent coming
together of Turandot and Calaf. The question as to
what might possibly draw these two characters
together remained unanswered. The notion of an
all-encompassing love as an instrument of redemption
that overcomes all obstacles so fascinated and
repelled Puccini that he found himself unable to
capture this Utopia for the stage. When he died in
1924 with the work unfinished the publishing house
of Ricordi commissioned the composer Franco Alfano
to complete the opera in line with sketches left
behind by Puccini.
There exists a form of violence that is bent on
destroying the body, not as a result of, or
companion to, another type of violence, but purely
as a deliberate act directed against that particular
body. I call this form of violence "autotelian". Our
Western literature begins with the description of an
excessive use of autotelian violence: Achilles is
not content with killing Hector; he wants to destroy
his body. In building the Colosseum, one of the most
famous edifices on earth, Rome was erecting a
structure dedicated to the public delight in
spectacles of autotelian violence. In our
modern rush to revile the connection between might
and violence we have forgotten how to recognise it
when we see it. In our eyes violence is committed
either illegitimately [crime] or legitimately [for
the prevention of crime] or as an act of war
designed to disarm a threatening enemy. Rapacious
violence is either criminalised or, in wartime,
denied; it is no longer tolerated, even within
families. At best, we perceive autotelian violence
as a peculiar form of madness, to be abhorred when
encountered in the real world and loathed when
viewed in the media.
Where autotelian violence determines
government policy it passes beyond our understanding
and we do not see it happening. Humans have this
ability; it is the greatest power that can be
invested in a person, to visit wanton violence on
other people. And if we ignore the fact that humans
have always been, at the very least, susceptible to
the temptation to commit acts of autotelian
violence, then we are liable not to see the risks
inherent in perpetrating violence in whatever form.
Wherever spaces are created for the perpetration of
autotelian violence, autotelian violence will be
perpetrated. [Jan Philipp Reemtsma]
