Berlin production Busoni was keen to have the incidental music performed along with Gozzi's play as he had originally conceived, and by early October 1906 at the latest had approached the actor-director
Max Reinhardt about a production. Reinhardt accepted, and a performance was scheduled for 1907. Busoni also tried to get a production started in London, but was initially unsuccessful. He wrote to Egon Petri about these results on 6 October 1906: "The Deutsches Theater [Reinhardt's theater] wants to perform
Turandot in the spring. An attempt at this Chinoiserie in London has been abortive. The abortion of my heavy load." The artist
Emil Orlik who had been working with Reinhardt since 1905, was to design the sets and costumes. He had recently returned from a two-year journey to the Far East and was considered the leading German expert on chinoiserie. In the end Orlik was unable to participate in the production, and the sets and costumes were done by Ernst Stern. Orlík did, however, provide the cover for
Breitkopf & Härtel's 1906 score of the
Turandot Suite (see above). In addition to these obstacles, Busoni himself had been undergoing a personal change. In 1906 he focused much of his attention on what was to become a highly influential essay: the
Outline of a New Aesthetic of Music (completed in November 1906 and published in 1907). And from September to December 1907 he was composing the
Elegies,
BV 252, which marked a major turning-point in his musical development. From February 1906 to October 1911 he composed his first opera,
Die Brautwahl ("The Bridal Quest",
BV 258), an enormously lengthy and ambitious "musical-fantastic comedy" based on a tale by
E. T. A. Hoffmann. The music of the opera is an eclectic mix, with quotations from other composers, such as
Rossini and
Mozart, and others more obscure. Its composition spans the years when Busoni's style was evolving rapidly, and the music of the opera incorporates it all. Although Busoni had refused to cut the score of his music for
Turandot or reduce the size of the orchestra, he did agree to a Reinhardt request for more music. In 1911 he composed
Verzweiflung und Ergebung ("Despair and Resignation",
BV 248a) to be played between acts IV and V; he also added it between nos. 7 and 8 of the already lengthy
Turandot Suite. His compositional growth during the intervening years is revealed in the new piece:
Antony Beaumont describes the opening half as "one of the finest passages in all of the
Turandot music." Reinhardt was a hugely innovative director with the Deutsches Theater at his disposal, and
Turandot was given plenty of publicity. An entire issue of the house magazine, (
Blätter des Deutschen Theaters) was given over to the production. There were contributions from Busoni, Orlik, and
Stefan Zweig among others. Theatrical reviews of the production were mixed, one (justifiable) criticism being that the music from a 60-piece orchestra did not so much highlight as paint over the action. The music was thought not to be in the service of the play, but at times in service of itself (like
Beethoven's
Egmont or
Mendelssohn's ''
Midsummer Night's Dream'').
London production Vollmöller and Reinhardt's next venture together was the hugely successful production of Vollmöller's religious mime play
The Miracle, which in opened in London on 23 December 1911 at the
Olympia exhibition hall. It was made into a full-colour feature film
with the same name by
Joseph Menchen and
Michel Carré with some of the original named cast, which premièred at
Covent Garden with a continuous symphonic score by
Engelbert Humperdinck on 21 December 1912. The English theatre director
Sir George Alexander was a man similar to Reinhardt. He was an equally active actor-manager who ran the
St James' Theatre, London and played hundreds of roles in his career. Alexander was at the first performance of
Turandot in Berlin, acquired the rights to it and brought Reinhardt's entire production to London in 1913. Jethro Bithell made an authorised English translation of the Gozzi-Vollmöller play. Carter, who had also seen the Berlin production, was very complimentary about the music.
"quote" He also commented that the inferior lighting arrangements in the St. James' Theatre affected the production most.
ref Carter book After a fortnight Busoni had calmed down: in a letter to H.W. Draber, 21 Jan 1913, he wrote: St. Saëns (and Rimsky K.) also contributed to the Turandot music (because mine was insufficient) - which was played in Varieté style by a 20-piece orchestra. The success was great!! The newspapers are captivated.
Fascinating! How should one defend oneself? In a letter on the same day in 1913 to his wife Gerda, Busoni said he had considered going to court over the affair, but realised the season would have been over before the case was finished. He also wonders what Gerda thinks about an opera in Italian based on Gozzi's play. ==Recordings==