The lavish production of Turandot opened yesterday at the opera house of the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) as the most ambitious of all the 100 programs in the opening season of the China's new grand theater. With gorgeous costumes, elaborate settings and opera's biggest stars from China, Italy and Russia, the performance has sparked worldwide interest.

What makes this Turandot particularly special is the last 18 minutes, which was scored by Chinese composer Hao Weiya.

Based on the 23 pages of Puccini's last sketches and notes before he died without finishing the opera in 1924, Hao has created new music including Princess Turandot's aria The First Tears and the duet between Calaf and Turandot.

Hao tries to follow Puccini's way, maintaining his style and blend a little Chinese sense into the tune. "It's relatively easier to write a destructive one, I mean, a piece of music totally different from Puccini's style, using modern orchestration and composing techniques," the composer once said. "But I prefer to follow Puccini's way, because anyway, Turandot is Puccini's and is Italian opera."

He also hopes the audience will not be able to distinguish between his music and Puccini's original score.

If this was his goal, Hao has achieved it.

"Hao's new ending sounds close to Puccini's music. The score cares much in orchestration and sounds beautiful," comments the Rome-based Chinese conductor Lu Jia who and the Italian conductor Giuseppe Acquaviva will in turn take the baton to conduct the opera.

"It's not that easy for Chinese people to love Italian opera as they love Italian fashion and spaghetti," says Franco Moretti, general manager of Italy Foundation of Festival Puccini, which helped produce the show.

"But this joint-production of Turandot is a good start. Personally, I feel interested in Hao's score of the new ending. He respects the tradition of Italian opera as well as the master Puccini."

Universally considered the most complete and varied form of theatre, opera is the fruit of great talents and skills. Therefore, NCPA has produced an opera itself in the opening season to show its ambition and ability.

But why Turandot?

"First of all it is so important in the history of opera," says Hao.

"Puccini's death in 1924 and the premiere of Turandot at La Scala in 1926 are usually considered the end of the `golden age of opera'. After that, opera, like the sunset, brilliant but sentimental, had been greatly challenged by movies, the rising visual art in the 20th century, and finally lost its position," says he.

Until he died at the age of 88, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) did not see any more "grand operas" he and Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) tried to create after his Aida premiered in Italy in 1871. Frightened to see the Germany's Wagner conquer the opera world, the Italians were expecting a new big Italian composer and a new masterpiece.

Giacomo Puccini started writing in 1920 and took four years to almost complete Turandot, following the tradition of Italian grand opera. He proved to the world that Italy was still the center of opera.

Unfortunately, Puccini died of throat cancer in 1924 in Brussels before he finished the work. His colleague, Franco Alfano, completed it by using Puccini's notes and sketches. This full-length became the normal version that performs worldwide since the opera premiered in 1926, two years after Puccini's death.

"It is because Turandot was created like an elegy in the history of opera, we choose it as the first and the only opera we produce in the opening season," says Chen Zuohuang, music director of NCPA.

The NCPA's new version also might change the mixed feelings Chinese might have about the opera.

Many Chinese like Turandot, because "it is like a folklore that happens in Beijing", as Puccini wrote on the score. Puccini used eight themes from China, including the most famous Chinese folk song Jasmine, which were popular in the early 1990s.

However, many Chinese disliked the opera because they believed the story is unconvincing and Princess Turandot was "too cruel to be a Chinese woman."

When the China Central Opera House planned to produce Turandot in 1994, they met strong opposition. Critics were particularly opposed to the scene in which the princes fail to answer Turandot's riddles, and have heads cut off and hung on the palace wall.

China Central Opera House finally premiered Turandot in Beijing in 1994, making it the first opera sung in Italian in China.

Various versions of Turandot have been performed in China including the most famous production directed by Zhang Yimou at the Forbidden City in 1998.

Gao Guangjian, who designed the sets for the Forbidden City version, designs the NCPA version too.

7:30, till March 26; 2:00 pm, March 23

National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA), west to the Great Hall of the People

400-880-2880, 8561-5555

(China Daily March 22, 2008)