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We are joined by composer Christopher Tin, who has written a new ending for Puccini’s famously unfinished Turandot with librettist Susan Soon He Stanton, one of the writers on “Succession” on HBO. This production is being performed by Washington National Opera May 11 – 25, 2024, directed by Francesca Zambello.
No one is more suited to create a compelling ending to Puccini’s otherwise unfinished fantasy story than Christopher Tin, a two-time Grammy-winning composer of concert and media music. Time Magazine calls his music “rousing” and “anthemic,” while The Guardian calls it “an intelligent meeting of melody and theme.” In addition to premiering in some of today’s most popular video games, Christopher’s music has been performed in many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, the United Nations, and Carnegie Hall, where he had an entire concert devoted to his music.
Washington National Opera May 11 – 25, 2024
Director Francesca Zambello
Susan Soon He Stanton – Playwrite Succession
Christopher Tin – Composer
TICKETS
Photo of Christopher Tin by Andy Wilkinson
BIOS
Christopher Tin, Composer
Christopher Tin is a two-time Grammy-winning composer of concert and media music. Time Magazine calls his music ‘rousing’ and ‘anthemic’, while The Guardian calls it ‘joyful’ and ‘an intelligent meeting of melody and theme’. His music has been performed and premiered in many of the world’s most prestigious venues: Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, the United Nations, and Carnegie Hall, where he had an entire concert devoted to his music. He has also been performed by ensembles diverse as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Metropole Orkest, and US Air Force Band.
His song “Baba Yetu”, originally written for the video game Civilization IV, is a modern choral standard, and the first piece of music written for a video game ever to win a Grammy Award. His debut album, the multi-lingual song cycle Calling All Dawns, won him a second Grammy in 2011 for Best Classical Crossover Album, and his follow-up release The Drop That Contained the Sea debuted at #1 on Billboard’s classical charts, and premiered to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium. His third album To Shiver the Sky also debuted at #1, and was funded by a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign that raised $221,415, smashing all previous classical music crowdfunding records. His fourth album, The Lost Birds, is a collaboration with acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8 and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2023.
Tin is signed to an exclusive record deal with Universal under their legendary Decca label, published by Concord and Boosey & Hawkes, and is a Ya maha artist. He works out of his own custom-built studio in Santa Monica, CA.
Susan Soon He Stanton, Librettist
Susan Soon He Stanton is a playwright, television writer, and screenwriter originally from ‘Aiea, Hawai‘i, and now living in New York and London. Her plays have been produced internationally and regionally across the United States. Susan worked on all four seasons of HBO’s SUCCESSION as a writer/producer, for which she has received Emmy, Writers Guild of America, and Peabody Awards.
Francesca Zambello
Francesca Zambello is a renowned director of opera and theater and a leading light in the arts who has made an indelible mark around the world. Her home is New York City but her work has graced the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, the Bolshoi, Covent Garden, the Munich Staatsoper, Paris Opera, New York City Opera, Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and English National Opera. As a director of the Glimmerglass Festival, Francesca is proud to be transforming the lives of children in all aspects of theater through her many apprenticeship programs.
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF SHOW
[This transcript was auto-generated and may not be accurate.]
PETER
Welcome to the Indie Opera Podcast. This is Peter
WALKER
And this is Walker
PETER
Who is in Washington, DC. And I’m going down to Washington, DC, and we’re going to go and see Turandot together. I’m very excited.
WALKER
Yeah, it’s going to be amazing.
PETER
Can’t wait. So it’s a new production of Toronto and I’m going to say Toronto[silent t]. though not Turando”t”, which most people say Turando”t”.
Because I did a little research. I mean, I’ve always said Turando[silent t], which is technically the wrong way, because NO ONE says it that way. But the story is that actually when it was being written they use the word Turando[silent t], you know, Toscanini called it Turando[silent t]. And then after Puccini died, his children insisted that it was Turando”t”. So everyone did it. And I looked it up. It’s there, in the Ping Pang Pong scene, look at the rhyming structure.
WALKER
Right.
PETER
It’s Turando[silent t]. right?
WALKER
Yeah.
PETER
It has to rhyme with another o word.
WALKER
Exactly. So that’s the solution?
PETER
Yeah, I’m sticking with it.
WALKER
Okay. All right, nerd, the nerdiness is victorious.
PETER
Well, they’re doing a production of Turandot at the Washington National Opera. It opens, right now, May 11th to the 25th, with director Francesca Zambello. And as you know, the end of Turandot was never finished. Could, because he died before we finished writing it. So. Susan. Susan Soon He Santon, who was a playwright and writes for television, she writes for succession, though.
WALKER
Succession.
PETER
Sorry. Did I say secession?
WALKER
It’s not a civil war drama.
PETER
I haven’t seen it because I can’t wait for HBO.
WALKER
Oh, Peter. It’s not. It’s not a Civil War drama.
PETER
No, it’s not hoop skirts?
WALKER
Maybe that’s what will be next to. Yeah, maybe that’s Christopher’s next project.
PETER
So she’s the screenwriter or one of the screeners for succession. And the composer Christopher Tin has been asked to complete the opera, the unfinished portion. Now, do you know or did you know of Christopher Tin before we had a chance to interview him?
WALKER
I didn’t, I didn’t, yeah. And, you know, apparently he has risen to fame through his, music for video games, including civilization IV. I’m about as distant from, any type of video game as you are from Succession. So, yeah, apparently his piece has become a concert staple around the world and competitions. And it’s really, it’s really like propelled him to much more, much more fame. And then he’s also done a bunch of film music also. Right.
PETER
Yeah. The way I heard of him is people have asked me, have you heard this choral piece? And I heard this way “Waloyo Yamoni”, which you can see on YouTube. You’ve heard it, I’m sure you’ve heard it, because if you’re a classic music geek like I am, I’m sure it’s been fed to you.
WALKER
Yeah.
PETER
Let’s sort of let’s hit the basic background story behind Turandot so that while we’re talking about it with the composer Christopher Tin, the people won’t be completely lost if they’ve never seen the opera. do you want to tell the story or should I?
WALKER
No, you’re better at it. You do it.
PETER
Okay.
WALKER
I’ll just sit here and correct you if you do anything wrong.
PETER
I’m sure I will.
WALKER
Okay. Go ahead.
PETER
So Turandot starts, and basically, Turandot is a princess who is unmarried, and she doesn’t want to get married. She seems to be a rather stern character, but we don’t actually see her for the whole first act. They just sing about her, and suitors come and they go through a test, she asks them three questions, and if they get all three right, they can marry her. But if they get one wrong.
WALKER
[Cand cutting across throat gesture] And execute them.
PETER
Yes. And so the opera starts actually with, with an execution of a suitor.
WALKER
And that’s where the other suitor falls in love, Calaf, what a great moment.
PETER
He’s seeing this guy being killed, and he falls in love with her… because obviously… Right.
WALKER
Oh, what a hottie. Yeah, she’s the praying mantis of princesses.
PETER
Yes. So, And she really doesn’t want to get married. I mean, she clearly he’s not interested.
WALKER
She has issues. we don’t know why yet why she doesn’t want to get married to anyone.
PETER
And of course, you know, Calaf, signals his intention to answer the three questions. And there are these three ministers. Ping Pang Pong. Oh, my God, these names… Ping Pang Pong try to stop him from doing so. Saying “You don’t want to do this.” And he decides he’s going to go through with it anyway. So that’s Act One.
Act Two is him actually going and going through the questions? And he of course answers all three of the questions. And she is really upset by this. And he sees this, And so Calaf says, well, I’ll ask you a question. And if you get it right you can behead me.
WALKER
Well she can make a choice.
PETER
Well I think he says I will, I’ll die if you if you’re right.
WALKER
All right if you so desire. If you haven’t fallen in love with me yet.
PETER
She very clearly shows she’s not interested.
WALKER
Pretty clearly.
PETER
Yeah. And she, she rages and wants to she starts questioning all the people to find out what his name is. And that’s the beginning of Act Three. She sends people out to to ask everyone in the country who is this man? Of course. that is at the point where Calaf sings the famous Nessun Dorma, which means nobody’s sleeping or no one sleeps. So the best way. I don’t know what the best translation of that is… Nessun dorma. Now, the other part of this is his father, who is a disgraced king, is actually there in the country, incognito with a slave girl named Liu. And of course, Liu takes one look at Calaf, and she’s in love with him.
WALKER
Wait, but why doesn’t she know him from earlier?
PETER
No.
WALKER
Why is she seeing Calaf for the first time? He’s the son of the King.
PETER
They were exiled. He’s been hiding there. Okay. And I. I think the king has been telling her stories about him. So maybe her love of him is a little more justified in Calaf.
WALKER
Okay. Yeah, it’s probably.
PETER
So, you know, and of course he sings Nessun Dorma and the the mornings over, and he then approaches, Turandot to say, well, what is my name? And they, they figure out that there’s someone who knows what his name is, and it’s Li. And they drag Liu out and threaten her.
WALKER
They actually torture her
PETER
They threaten her with torture?
WALKER
No, they actually torture her. And then he and he and he just stands aside. H lets this happen.
PETER
I think she decides that she would rather die than give up Calaf’s name and she commits suicide. She grabs a knife and [geture] And of course at that point that Puccini finished orchestrating. After that it’s sort of a reconstruction from these sketchbooks and, and things like that. And there have been several reconstructions. And we’ll talk about that with Christopher when he’s on.
WALKER
I think just, you know, there was. Yeah. And then it became sort of a free for all who’s going to finish this opera? Some people thought it couldn’t be finished. And that and that Puccini, you know, that he that it was good that he died because he’d he never recognized his failure in writing this opera that could that couldn’t end, that couldn’t, couldn’t be given the right ending then, you know, then Alfano, was given. No, no, no, Puccini chose someone to finish it. Then Puccini’s son vetoed that and gave Alfano the job. A that’s the ending that we frequently see in performance. I’ll find the ending. but then also the composer Berio did an ending. and now Christopher Tin so.
PETER
Well, there have been others.
WALKER
There have been others that have been others as well. Yeah, yeah.
PETER
All right. So we got a chance to talk with Christopher Tin, and we got to ask him how it feels to be asked to rewrite what is the ending of a major masterpiece.
CHRISTOPHER
I will say that I am blessed to be given this opportunity. And the world has existed for the last 100 years, with the Alfano ending just fine. There are people who complain about it, but, you know, no operas, perfect and all that. That said, I’m tremendously grateful that there is already this tradition of trying to rewrite the ending prior to me jumping into this, because if somebody said to me, finish Mozart’s Requiem for something, you know, like I, you know, I this isn’t exactly like this well-trodden path of composers trying and failing before.
With this, even the Alfano ending was a harshly criticized upon initial reception. And, you know, all the others, including Berio’s ending, have all sort of been somewhat accepted that have also sort of engendered criticism as well for a variety of different reasons. So based on that, I felt like, okay, well, if I screw this up, I’m just another composer screwed it up and it’s just fine.
Right? But that’s it. I had no intention of screwing this up. Like I invested a lot of attention to to this particular project.
PETER
So when you’re rewriting this, you’re rewriting this to address those issues, or was there something larger you wanted to address?
So there’s the whole “Chinoiserie” aspect of it. It’s very much in debate as these days.
And there was actually a really, really good New York Times article that came out maybe a couple of weeks ago talking about, Butterfly and Turandot and, it was a good one. Right. And I actually agreed with a lot of it. I mean, first of all, Puccini, in my opinion, as an Asian American, he did a pretty darn good job of incorporating Asian, melodies into his score.
He did his due diligence. Like, the more that I read about what he did. I mean, for a person in Italy in 1924. Yeah. You’re not going to have great access to authentic or rather a lot of musicology about, you know, Asian music. Good for him for like, doing the research. Right. At least he tried. I mean, and, you know, I will say, if you know any of the rest of my music as well, I’d be a hypocrite if I said that one should not meld together music from different cultures.
I think that music is one of these wonderful things that should transcend culture, and that we should share music. And similarly on these cultural lines, yes, there are particular cultures that are sensitive to appropriation, and there’s some that we really don’t care so much. I sort of think that Chinese culture in particular really does not care all that much.
I sort of think that I can’t speak for all Chinese people out there, but, you know, it’s sort of like when you see a person who’s obviously not Chinese wearing a Chinese character, you know, like a tattoo or something like that on their arm. You know, nobody’s a and none of us are offended by that. You know, at worst, we’re just like, you know, all right.
Like, I hope you got the word right. You know? I mean, you never know, right? I mean, the chinoiserie does not bother me at all. It was a product of its time. And frankly, a lot of great music came out of it. And you hear that on tour and a lot of great stuff. There are aspects of it like ping, pang and pong that are kind of annoying, and that’s actually kind of maybe not so much of Puccini’s fault.
Maybe it was. But I mean, nowadays you say that to any Asian American person and they’re just gonna roll their eyes and say, oh, come on, you know, like, are we are we like, eight years old again on a playground, like, what is this? Right. And there are actually sort of deeper elements of, cultural representation through the musical tinta that Bertini used, where he sort of assigned a certain harmonic language to each of his characters, that sort of imbued the characters with certain, I guess, like characteristics, that once you delve into it gets a little bit offensive. But those are really my only Qibbles about it.
By the way, we we need to acknowledge that the ending was masterminded by Susan Soon-Yi Stanton, my collaborator on this. She’s my librettist, first time opera librettist, same time, same way that I’m a first time opera composer. and we had a really great, collaboration on this project, as Susan is well known for, amongst other things, being a playwright, but also as a, a television writer for the show “Succession” on HBO.
Which is super cool as a fantastic show to, and, you know, every once in a while I joked to her, hey, so we’re doing an opera about succession right now. but, to get back to your question, the big problem that I saw was that, nobody believes the way their love story wraps up in the original final ending.
And frankly, it’s a little bit cringeworthy post. Me too. I mean, I assume that everyone listening to this knows how it wraps up, in case you don’t basically, after two and a half acts of them being at each other’s throats and trying to conquer each other or kill each other or whatever, Calaf plants a big, juicy kiss onto her and without her permission.
CHRISTOPHER
And suddenly you get the harps go. And the fluid doodle doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. And suddenly she’s like, I’m in love with you now, right? And even by opera standards, that’s pretty over the top, right? But that is way too far and frankly, kind of insulting. And, you know, the kind of sexual assault, a little bit rapey, you know, I felt like that just needed to be fixed.
And I think Francesca Zambello, the artistic director of Washington National Opera, she’s also, she really, feels that Turandot as a Puccini heroine, had so much unrealized potential in a way, you know, she she loves to say that Puccini women are great characters. but Turandot herself is given this screwed up ending that makes no sense.
And so we wanted to give her a real ending. I do know that what Susan came up with was entirely Susan’s idea. Like when she suggested these little plot twists, we were all surprised and delighted in a way. And, it’s suddenly all like, once you know what Susan did, it’s hard to go back to thinking about the other way the plot unfolds itself like, it’s very it’s very clever, and not gimmicky.
It actually makes a ton of sense. And, yeah, I, I’m very thrilled with what she did.
WALKER
So you’ve written the new ending. Have you also written any new arias in the opera?
Well, my ending is actually It Takes over where Puccini laid down his pen, according to Toscanini. Right. and, it’s about 18 minutes long. depending on how Speranza, the conductor, is going to take certain passages but turned on herself, has a new aria, one that is actually a bit of a throwback to in questo regio from the second act.
Calaf has a new aria as well, which is also a throwback to, non piano. Jerry Liu in the first act. not so direct, but there is a reference to that. And this was deliberate. I wanted to sort of anchor some of the segments of what I did. to draw a line between them and what Puccini did in a way, like anchor them to Puccini, score, in harmonic ways or in, you know, little motifs that are sort of quotations of previous moments.
And then there’s a big kiss theme, and then, the chorus comes back on and we set the stage for Turin, Dot’s final, address to, the citizens, China. And then she reveals, that she has chosen to rule with mercy, and that, Calaf will not be beheaded. And the chorus sings about love again, but hopefully in our new ending, you believe it when we get to the end, because it wasn’t predicated by somebody just planting a wet one on, Turin dot.
PETER
So did you rewrite anything from earlier in the opera?
CHRISTOPHER
I actually, we I’m pretty much left the original opera, Puccini section, intact as it is. I don’t think you would actually go and see the Puccini portion and say, oh, something was changed to accommodate a new ending. Like we very much wanted our new ending to be like a, you know, the final episode in a TV series or something.
We’re going back to the the TV analogy, right? It’s it’s own contained unit that does reference the rest of the season, but, makes sense on its own. And, and, you know, just just had a better end for the show in a way.
WALKER
So did you base the music that you wrote on Puccini sketches, or did you add new material to to the writing?
CHRISTOPHER
Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m a composer, right? I mean, I’m not going to I’m never going to lie. I’m not going to sit around just. Okay. Yes. It’s Puccini. Okay. Yes. I mean, and I did try to use as much of both motifs from the earlier portion of the offered his portion, and also some of the sketches that he left behind.
But the sketches that he left behind don’t actually correlate to the new libretto in any sort of way. So that became one of these questions like, how do you treat these? In a way, I sort of did what Berio did. I sort of recontextualize them. You know, Berio’s Mr. Postmodern, like everything gets thrown into this. No. Is magic or not?
No. Sort of, sort of like thematic and harmonic material that just kind of overflows all over the place to dazzling results. I would take Puccini sketches that he had left behind for the end of the opera, some of what you hear in the Alfano ending, and I would use them in our new ending, but in ways that maybe created a conversation about aspects that were not okay about the Alfano ending.
you know, I’ll give you an example. there is a moment in the Alfano ending, where, after Calaf, kisses to a doll, he sings O mio Fiore Martino, you, Flora and, just for that, I thought, da da da da da da da. I forget the Italian, but basically he’s saying, “Oh, my rare unfolding flower dyed bosom. I am they scent, I am breathing they bosom that is heaving…” or something like that. Something very like by our standards now kind of fringy as a thing that you would say to somebody that you just kissed. you know, without permission. Right? Just, it’s just a little gross. in our ending, I’ll just tell you right now what Susan came up with was that, you know, how to or not in a Pettine portion?
Things in questa regio where she talks about her ancestors. Lo Ling, who was attacked and forcibly assaulted and raped, presumably. Right. so what Susan did, and this is super clever, is in after a big confrontation scene between Calaf and Turner. Now, remember, after Lou gets taken off, these two are left alone on stage for the first time.
CHRISTOPHER
This is the first time you see that few people on stage, two people on stage. It’s the most intimate, intimate moment of the entire opera. And suddenly these two forces are left to duel it out together. Right? So after a bit of a, a duel, which, by the way, is more, you know, like more mutual now, like in the Alfano ending, basically, he let Calaf just scream at Turandot for a couple of minutes before kissing her. Right. So in our ending, they actually go at it on equal terms as two adversaries, right? it’s an epic duel. so after that, the end of that, what Turandot admits is that it was not Lo Ling who was raped.
So now she reveals this in a moment of vulnerability, and that recasts everything right.
And so now she sings, this song is Aria, And the aria that she sings is basically her reliving that experience. But then at the end of it, he, goes into this sort of more sort of steely, like, I will overcome this mode, you know, she tells the story. And then and then she says, none of this.
But since then, you know, like, no man shall have me like none shall defile me ever again, like I am powerful. And she, you know, proclaims this right. And it’s a very powerful moment. but in the first portion where she’s singing about what happened to her, I actually use another Puccini motif, del primo piano, which appears in some versions of the cloth.
I think there are there are versions out there where I believe they cut that moment. But, that’s a fragment that I use, and I bring it back in this new guys. And by doing so, you sort of create this commentary, right? Like Del Primo Canto is about my first. Here’s following. And how when she first laid eyes on Prince Calaf, she was so moved by his beauty that she started to cry.
Right. Well, okay, that’s ridiculous. So now we’ve taken that same motif, and now it’s about her first tears being actually a reference to just truly horrific moment that happened to her in her past that sort of defined her character.
PETER
So is the music that you’ve written is it going to sound like Puccini or is it going to sound like clearly Christopher tense music?
CHRISTOPHER
I think they recognize it as mine. I mean, I think the key is that, on the contemporary classical composer spectrum, I am of the more sort of academics might say common practice side of things, functional harmony, melodies. I’m a big melody guy. I love writing a good tune. you know, certain musical structures that are identifiable that are sort of discreet and neatly packaged.
So you know that there’s a, you know, here’s this section and here’s a big chorus or a climax. You know, I tend to write in very familiar ways to the modern audience. And part of that language comes from the fact that, you know, I got into music, and composing, following in the footsteps of a lot of great film composer who inherited this sort of Puccini tradition.
So the way that I tackle music isn’t so far removed from Puccini such that if I write in my own natural voice, it’s it’s not really so foreign. In the same way that Luciano Berio might be. He is a incredible, incredible composer, but his music sounds nothing like routine. And frankly, Franco Alfama music doesn’t sound like Puccini either.
He was already sort of heir to this sort of, progressive modernist tradition coming out of Germany. Maybe, Puccini was the last of this great line of, of, grand opera composers. You know, there are some scholars who say that Turandot is the closing opera of the grand Italian opera tradition. Franco Alfano wanted to take it a different way.
And I think that’s why his ending is a little bit sort of, sort of rejected by by audiences because it doesn’t quite fit in. He wasn’t into writing pretty melodies. that sat indiscreet sort of scenes, that flowed one to the other. His was a language more sort of like Richard Strauss. Follow me. You know something that’s, it’s it’s very sort of.
And the music is nested almost on a bar by bar measure with the words and the affect of what’s going on, and it shifts a lot, and it’s pretty dazzling on an orchestration or sort of standpoint. But what you’re not delivering is sort of the audience satisfaction of, say, a stream of hit tunes, one after the other. Right?
PETER
You know, to me it sounds like Puccini is reaching for, more modern sound.
CHRISTOPHER
like there’s whole sections to me that sound like Debussy, but that’s everything with him, right? I mean, like, there are certainly passages in Turandot that are sort of baby Debussy in a way. I mean, and, well, okay, you go back in an opera earlier, la la del West.
And that’s very, you know, very see. Right. And there are aspects of turned out that are kind of jealousy and there are aspects that turned out that are a little bit, you know, Rite of Spring. I mean, we were we were joking about, you know, one particular section. Yeah. That.Dun dun dun dun dun. And that accompaniment there is very is very, rite of spring.
PETER
The part that sounds like Stravinsky to me are those chords at the beginning, those crunchy chords that start the act.
CHRISTOPHER
Okay. So the interesting thing about that chord, that crunchy chord, it’s like a I call it like a D-flat major over a D minor.
You know, I think of it that way it’s something you could also call it like a minor major seventh with an added, and, yeah. Yeah. like, added sharp 11 or something. Anyway, but, I actually use that harmony in my own aria that I wrote for her because that’s the that’s the same harmony that actually starts off all three acts.
I mean, both two of the acts basically start with the, you know, the Mandarin singing and he’s singing over those chords. Right. But also that exact same chord is in the intro to Act Two prior to when the, the ministers come on as well. So, I mean, there are certain harmonic signposts that I used, in a way to anchor what I did with what Puccini did.
And the certain, like, melodic things that I do as well. I mean, I bring back, some of the more recognizable motifs, like the ax motif, which is what starts off the opera da da, and, bring that back. And I re harmonize it a couple of times. The show sort of like the development of, Princess Turandot.
I do a big callback to Nessun Dorma, actually, and I do it in the moment that Calaf gives his name to Turin. That, and the reason that I do that is because I wanted the audience to understand now that Calaf has changed, because in order for Turin not to love Calaf, he needs to see that he’s changed. Right?
So I took his most signature moment, which is nothing drama. And that, by the way, is this moment where he’s gloating about the fact that he’s won. he’s won, he’s gloating. This is his victory lap, right? And he’s just being a real rat bastard on stage, even though it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. He’s just kind of a jerk.
And now I do a quick, quotation of that in the big moment where Calaf, on his knees in our production, reveals to Turin, my name is Calaf. and by doing so, we signal to the audience, you know, that now he’s transformed. Now, instead of being this guy who thinks that love is this thing that you need to conquer now, he’s a guy who believes that love is a thing that you need to be willing to give up your life for. And we do that musically.
PETER
So does the opera end with the chorus singing Nessun Dorma?
CHRISTOPHER
Well, actually, I think that’s actually Puccini’s idea to to reprise Nessun Dorma. But, I do this. I actually bring that into my back at the end here. I do, and I’ll tell you why. I believe in this silly idea called tradition. you know, it’s the preservation of fire, not the worship of ashes, right? As Mahler would say. And, we’ve lived a hundred years with a big missing Dorma finale at the end. And, of course, it’s a little out of the blue in the the, Alfano ending, because everything up until that moment doesn’t make a ton of sense.
But it is everyone’s favorite part of the Alfano ending. And so I am not, because there are people who are going to come and say like, this is weird because it’s not what I’m used to. The very least I can give them is their favorite part of what they’re used to. so in a way. Like if, you know, music theory and if you know Shane Carey analysis, the whole point of your composition is to get to this big, satisfactory five one cadence at the end.
Yeah. so my five/one cadence. And by the way, I’m teasing this to a perfect cadence all the way up to the very end is we do a big sort of like moment where the soloists come together and they sing the signature line that Susan wrote for me, which is, in this beautiful late night, let us show the stars what it means to be free.
So she gave me this line twice. It’s introduced in a new aria, and it comes back to and on, collapsing as a duet right at the end. And this perfect authentic cadence that you’ve been waiting for all this time finally happens. And what do you resolve to, do? Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. There’s the big payoff.
But the thing is, because I. Because I quote Nessun Dorma before I was very careful not to quote the exact same parts in both of my my usages. Okay, so when you add the two together, they actually form the complete picture of Nessun Dorma. But the Nessun Dorma at the end excludes sort of the eight bars or whatever it is that I sort of quoted before and has different material that builds to its slightly different conclusion.
That also interweaves the big love motif after like, in questo regio, dun dun dun dun dun and and so I bring that all together because I like to take multiple musical ideas and mash them all together for a big, explosive finale. And everyone sings about love. Hopefully this time you believe it.
WALKER
So where are you currently in the rehearsal process?
CHRISTOPHER
Yeah, I saw the, the, the, the staging last night for the first time, and I was just so moved. I mean, first of all, I just I was sitting there, I said, I can’t believe this is finally happening. I mean, Francesca first approached me about this pre-pandemic, and for a couple of years, I didn’t know whether it was going to happen or not, but, I kept hoping, hoping, hoping, you know, because first time opera composer, this is not the usual sort of task that you’re given.
CHRISTOPHER
It’s an interesting way to jump into the field. Right. okay. This is kind of a fun story. you didn’t know who I was. and I’d never written off it before, but it was on my bucket list. But one day, he was in her kitchen making lunch or something like that. And she heard this music coming from her son’s bedroom, her teenage sons bedroom.
So. And it’s classical music. And she’s like, what is this? What’s he doing? So she goes up and she knocks on his door and, it turns out he’s playing civilization six. And the theme that I wrote for civilization six is sung in Italian. It’s a choral piece. It sounds very classical, actually. and she is like, I thought this was an opera.
It sounds kind of like an opera, but I’d never heard it before. And so she asked him, what do you listen to? And he explained about my music. And then she went on this dive on YouTube and discovered more of my stuff. And then, a few days later, my agent gets an email from her saying, hi, I’d like to talk to your client, Christopher Tan, about writing for opera.
And so I flew up to San Francisco, where she was staging the ring. and she was doing rehearsals. And so, like, you know, we, we had lunch and actually saw what she was doing, and I was just, of course, blown away. I mean, I’m just I love this world and I want to stay in it. and afterwards we went to lunch and she said, you know, what do you want to write an opera about, is it?
No one’s ever asked me this before, right? and to be honest, I’d always been a little hesitant to because every composer that I’ve talked to about writing an opera says, oh, it’s going to kick your butt. Like it’s going to take years out of your schedule, and you’re not going to be able to do anything else.
And it’s kind of a downer because, you know, sometimes, you can you can spend two years of your life writing this thing and it gets a run of performances and then it goes away forever. And how demoralizing is that? Right. but, to get back to the story, Francesca and I bounce some ideas back and forth about things we wanted to do, and one of her ideas was that she’d always wanted to sort of commission a new ending to Turandot.
And the moment she said that, I said, oh, yes, that’s what I want to do, because it’s only 18 minutes long, right? So it’s not going to take two years of my life, and I get to write for one of the largest operatic sort of casts and, and instrumental ensembles in the canon. Right. It’s it’s enormous. And there’s a huge choir.
And I love writing choral music. There’s a children’s choir, there’s an offstage band, there’s all this exotic percussion. It’s a big orchestra, soloists who are just tremendous singers. Right? I mean, what what a great, great gig this is for a first-time opera composer. It’s not the usual. Like, you write a chamber opera for five singers and maybe, you know, eight players or whatever.
It’s huge.
WALKER
So you seem to really love writing in foreign languages. Can you tell us a little bit about why you love that so much?
CHRISTOPHER
So the language thing is actually less about language, even though I do get it sort of excited by this idea of, you know, broadening sort of the language base of choral music, it’s more to do with what that particular piece is about.
CHRISTOPHER
If it’s a text from a particular culture, I’d rather do it in that cultures language in a way, or if if what I’m trying to do is sort of, you know, one of these sort of multilingual concept song cycles where you sort of pluck text out of the literary traditions of different cultures, and you put them together so that they create this meaning collectively.
You know, you, you try to find the singers and the, the language that matches that text. And you try to do it. I try to do it in a very authentic way as well, and I try to do it through collaboration most of the time, too. so but that said, I do get a little bit bored by the standard languages as well too. Especially in, in sort of choral music. I’ve written some in a, in, in Latin, for example. but I find that, there’s this disassociation with the words when the singers are singing in a language that they don’t actually speak like Latin. So this is a, this is an idea that I was in a turning over my mind.
Right. On one hand, you can have a chorister singing career over and over again for, you know, a four-minute piece or something like that. But how much are they invested in what the words mean at that point? Do they even know what career means? On the other hand, you can have a stadium full of football fans, soccer fans, football fans, and they might be singing we will.
We will rock you. Each one of those singers has a much more deep emotional investment in the actual words that they’re singing right now. You know, they’re doing it collectively as a group. They’re all singing the same thing. They’re making a tremendous sound, and they’re cheering on their home team or whatever it is. And the association that those singers, the passion that those singers put into that those words is different in a way.
And this is something that’s kind of interesting to me these days. Like, I like, for example, gospel music. I think that gospel choirs, when they’re singing praise the Lord or something like that. There is a much more personal meaning with each of these singers when they say those words. And in sort of the Western classical tradition, we have a bit of a detachment from the meaning of the words based on the fact that sometimes they’re not in languages that we actually speak.
So, this is something I sort of want to explore a little more, like closing that gap between the singers saying the words and, understanding them. And really being able to imbue a certain level of love and passion into that performance because they’re singing something that’s actually meaningful to them. And I have a theory that when they do that, you get a better performance.
All of this has really made me sort of reflect on what got me interested in seeing in the first place. Now, I did join choir in high school, and I sang through, various classics. but, where I really thrived and where I really enjoyed singing was when I directed in a cappella group in college, and we did a lot of arrangements of actually, we did a lot of African and African American music. And I was their musical director, so I direct, I arranged a lot of the music and a lot of that music by sort of classical standards. It’s fairly straightforward, you know, it’s homophonic. Everyone’s saying the same words at the same time. You know, the, the, the voices move in the same direction. There’s no counterpoint. It’s just like it’s almost like background vocals for a rock song or a pop song or something like that.
We loved singing back, like it was just fun for us. And what I’m trying to find is a way to write for choirs, which is just a joy to sing. Because if you can nail writing music that the audience loves to listen to and a singers will love to sing by golly, like you just solve the formula, right?
Like that’s in a way all you could ask for. If you think about music as a service, if you will, or something that has utility, that is meant for people to enjoy and to create memories out of, and to have personal attachment to and meaning and love. Then by checking off those two check boxes, then you’re you’re basically doing all that for people.
And there’s part of me that also thinks that if you can write music that for just just for one person out there helps them grieve the loss of a family member or for a couple out there, they can march down the aisle to when they get married and, you know, create some loving memories and things like that.
If you can do that for people, then shouldn’t you do that for people? There are a lot of people writing music just for themselves out there or just to further the art, and I applaud that. I think it’s wonderful, but if you’re somebody who can actually just help out people through doing what they love, writing music, why not do that in a way like the way that I look at it is there’s this Japanese concept called “ikigai”.
And ikigai means your purpose in life. And my favorite way of talking about this is ikigai is the center of a Venn diagram with four circles. circle number one is the, thing that you are good at doing. Circle number two is the thing that, you, enjoy doing. circle number three is the thing that you can actually profit off of doing.
And circle number four is the thing that contributes to humanity in a positive sort of way. And if you if what you do lands in the center of all four of those, you’ve just discovered your ikigai, your purpose in life and, that’s my that’s my focus right now, writing music that sits squarely in the middle of that Venn diagram.
WALKER
How would you say writing for opera is different than writing for a film or a video game?
I, there are sort of like, I guess sort of mundane technical differences between the two. I mean, on, on, on one hand, film is a fixed medium. There’s a scene, it starts at a set time and ends at a certain set time, and that never changes.
And so the music that you write needs to start at a certain point, move around the dialog or the the action of the scene in a certain way and then fade out, you know, when it’s appropriate. video games are non-linear, so you never quite know what a player is doing. So you can’t really plan for all of those situations.
What I tend to get asked to do for video games is just write, basically background music. I mean, it’s almost like a commission in a way. They all say we just need five minutes of music, but sound sort of like ancient Babylonia or something like that. Okay. All right, all right. Yeah. Trot out the, you know, do a little research, find this ancient instrument.
Oh, okay. The discovery. Okay. That works. Let’s use that, you know, and then record something with that and then write a piece around it. And, you know, you create this, this, this thing. but it doesn’t need to attach itself to any sort of action that happens on screen or anything like that. And so there’s actually a lot of creative freedom in writing for video games.
The formal aspects of the music are kind of left up to me. As long as it’s five minutes and it doesn’t do anything outrageous. it works for the game then. Sure. A lot of times, actually, what I get asked to write is like a like a theme piece or something like that. For the opening menu of that game.
I would take that job over writing a song for the closing credits of a film any day of the week. Because, if you watch a movie, you’ll hear that song in the credits once, maybe twice. If you see the movie, if they played on the radio, you hear it more, but your exposure to it is limited.
If you write for a game, especially a game like civilization, every time the player boots up the game, they hear your music and you know what they say about music. The more you hear a piece of music, the more you like it, you know? And so it’s that I think was the key for me in terms of having a lot of, success getting my cool music out there.
Like my first big choral piece that I wrote was actually one of the very first, actually, it might have been the very first choral piece I ever wrote, but yeah, to now that I think of it, I think that was the first time I actually wrote a choral. but the fact that every time you booted up civilization four, you heard this piece of music.
CHRISTOPHER
I mean, it really just cemented it into people’s brains. And that led to a lot of opportunities for me. So what is it like to have the spotlight on you?
PETER
You’re writing your first opera and it’s being done by the Washington National Opera. Is that really stressful or difficult?
Yeah, yeah, it was really hard. but I will tell you why it was hard.
It was because this particular opera brief comes loaded with a lot of expectation and a lot of opinion. And, you know, even the moment it was announced, even like Cassini scholars reached out to me and, and said, what are you going to do? Because there’s no other commission where you will have 100 years of people’s opinions on what to write before you even start writing it, right?
And so I think, like the first 6 or 7 weeks was just me trying to find my voice within all of this. Because, you know, the question is, do you write in Puccini’s voice or do you write Christopher Tin’s voice? Right. Things like that. And how do you use Puccini material and still be Christopher Tan? and ultimately through a lot of soul searching and, and whatnot?
You know, I came to the conclusion that, most people really do not want to hear second rate Puccini, but they might enjoy first rate Christopher Tin. So we’re just going to do what I’m used to doing. use my usual bag of tricks. You know, my usual tool kit, and not Puccini’s bag of tricks or toolkit. And just be me, my predecessors. they went down various paths on how to treat this material with mixed success.
Alfano himself was very true. He was actually very true to Puccini’s sketches. But the problem is, in the version that we know, which is sort of the cut down Alfano ending, which has almost exclusively Puccini material, he didn’t take any of the sketches and develop them into anything more than just a fragment of a sketch.
And so, like, you know, the way the Alfano starts, which is those three big chords, {singing} “Principessa”, the more to that whole passage was actually the that’s actually written by Puccini. He, he sort of filled out the entire orchestration for that whole passage. And that was a very complete, thing that he left for us.
And I actually used the opening of that, Alfano he just used that, but didn’t actually turn it into a piece based on that motif. He just used it once and then moved on to the next Puccini sketch, moved on to the next Puccini sketch, then moved on to the next for Chinese sketch. And so it’s a little disjointed.
And he has it a little bar transitions where, you know, we go from one key to the other key and things like that. And he actually wrote some pretty nice motifs too. There is in his ending, there’s, there’s da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. And nice tune. I like that.
That was often it’s not Puccini’s, but, the biggest problem is it does not gel together in any sort of way. There’s no structural cohesion to it and no development of melodic ideas. It’s one after the other, incomplete idea after incomplete idea just thrown together. And that’s why, personally, I find it musically unsatisfying. But if you listen to the original often before Toscanini cut out all of the Alfano bits, it actually sits together really neatly.
It’s a cool ending. I like it, it still doesn’t sound anything like Puccini. In fact, it sounds even less like Puccini, but it’s still pretty cool.
PETER
So did you keep the happy ending or did you change that?
CHRISTOPHER
This is a fairy tale. Fairy tales have certain ways of ending, otherwise they’re not worth telling as fairy tales. So the Berio ending, for example, it’s actually really interesting.
Like the Calaf in Turandot. You know, they sort of they’re standing apart on separate sides of the stage. You have to walk off together into the distance, and we sort of don’t know whether they’re going to make it as a couple. It’s sort of ambiguous. I mean, it’s actually really dramatically compelling. it’s very sort of real in a way.
I think it would make a, you know, an Oscar winning feature film. Right? I mean, it’s very, you know, it’s true to life in a lot of ways. But the thing is, none of this is supposed to be true to life. None of it. This is a fairy tale. And especially as the last opera in the grand Italian Opera tradition, it needs to stay a fairy tale, you know, let’s give this tradition the sendoff it deserves, which in my mind is a big call reprise of the most famous opera aria in the entire cannon.
And that’s you go off galloping into the sunset.
WALKER
Yeah. so some people think that there was no good way to end this opera. and Puccini didn’t know how to end it. how do you think your ending went?
CHRISTOPHER
I mean, I think the problem was the plot, in a way. I mean, he had no idea how to to finish it, which is why I think what Susan came up with is pretty ingenious.
I mean, we’ve closed the book on this whole, you know, Turandot ending extravaganza. I’m sure it’s not going to be the case. Of course, a little invested in this, but I think we did a good job of solving this riddle. and I think it’s believable now. And, I think the problem Puccini had was love was looked at very differently in his era, you know, and it was pretty common for a woman to inherently be on a lower level of authority than a man.
And so, you know, this whole, oh, kiss her, and now she’ll fall in love with you thing. Maybe it made more sense to audiences back then, but what we’ve sort of understood as a culture now is that love is more reciprocal, and it’s more of a balanced thing. In order for love to be healthy, it needs to be sort of on equal footing, Right.
And that’s why we have these back-to-back moments of vulnerability between the two characters. Turandot revealing that she was the one who was raped and killed off putting his life in her hands. You know, these are two lovers who have finally signal to each other, look, you know this love is real. I’m revealing the deepest and darkest things about me.
And you know, from what I know about women, women that flies a lot better than just randomly grabbing them and kissing them. It’s kind of a trope, that’s aged poorly, I would say. And I think that, you know, I would not have tackled this ending, if I were a younger man, not, you know, married with a kid and having experience, love and understand, you know, what makes a happy marriage personally, like, I was able to sort of tap into sort of what makes my own marriage work, you know, like this, this understanding and mutual respect, like, these are possibly reasons why crafting a love story in this third act was difficult
100 years ago, like it was a different sort of understanding of love. And maybe that’s the issue at play here. Maybe our understanding of love has changed. While the opera stayed locked in 1924, so we brought love back into the picture in a 2024 sort of way for this one.
PETER
So thank you so much, Christopher, for coming and speaking to us today about the brand new ending to Turandot that we’re going to see in Washington.
PETER
It’s being performed by the Washington National Opera May 11th through 25th with director Francesca Zambello. the librettist Susan Soon He Stanton and you, Christopher Tin, composer, who has rewritten this wonderful new ending, and we cannot wait to see it.
WALKER
Yeah. Thank you, Christopher
CHRISTOPHER
Yeah! Thank you.
WALKER
Thanks so much.
PETER
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And if you have any comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind, please let us know by emailing us at comments@indieopera.com. This episode of the In the Apple Podcast was recorded on “Riverside.fm” with co-hosts Walker Lewis and Peter Szep with our special guest Christopher Tin. Our show is created with the support of Brooke Larimer. Our business and Operations manager, and Rossa Crean, our theme song creator.
This episode was edited by Peter Szep. Thank you for watching.