As you know, Jakomo Puccini did not have time to add one of his best operas - Turandot. According to legend, at the premiere, conductor Arturo Tuscanini stopped the production, announcing: "Here death interrupted work on the opera." After Tuscanini's words, the audience silently left the theater. Check if this is so.

In many Russian -speaking printed sources (such as the Encyclopedia "Creative Portraits of Composers" 1990) It is said: "The audience parted in deep silence." A similar phrase is given in the popular article by T. Keldysh. A number of publications went further - there It is said: "After the words of Tuscanini, the singers, the orchestra and the audience left the theater in deep silence." But the "Opera Dictionary" of 1965 claimsthat "silence was interrupted by exclamations:" Glory to Puccini! "."

Before you understand where the truth is, we turn to the background.
Puccini died in Brussels on November 29, 1924, not having time to complete the final act of his last creation. Sources testifythat the seriously ill composer entrusted the point of putting his colleague Riccardo Zandonai. However, the son of Puccini, Tonio, suddenly imposed a veto on his father’s decision. One of versions, he believed that Zandonai was too famous and the opera will be associated with him alone. One way or another, but between the rest of the candidates - Tommazini, Muscanya and Alfano - the choice fell on the last.

Franco Alfano worked to the best of his strength, the date of the premiere was approaching. True, another circumstance intervened. Shortly before his death, Puccini told his friend, the famous conductor Arturo Tuscanini: “If I do not have time to finish the opera, then at this place the production will go to the ramp and say:“ The author composed the music until this moment. He died here. ” Tuscanini took the remark as the last will, agreed everything with the Puccini family, and they decided to give the prime minister without an alpha end. One single time.

“Here death interrupted the work on the opera, which the maestro did not have time to complete” - these words spoken by Arturo Tuscanini on April 25, 1926 on the stage of the La Scala Theater immediately after the music suddenly fell silent, became famous. A number of sources are given by another version of the phrase: "Here the maestro folded its pen." Some art historians even They thinkthat this day has completed the history of classical music.

But for us, another question remains open: what happened after Tuscanini's replica? For the final answer, we turned to foreign sources. That's what Writes Julian Badden in his book “Puccini. His life and works ":

In the silence, accompanying the slow descent of the curtain, there was a voice: "Glory to Puccini!" There was crying from everywhere. As [Franz] Legar recalled, there was a lot of tears. There is no reason to doubt his words.

The same version is given by biographers Kenneth Kristensen (“Mysticism of Puccini. Genius on the other side of music”), Gaia Cervadio (“Lukino Visconti. Biography”), Konrad Dradyden (“Franco Alfano. When I went beyond Turandot), Gustavo Markezi (“ Puccini. Life and photographs ”) and dozens of other writers. Pierrot Melorosa mentions the “flurry of applause”, and Hovard Greenfield is “one of the most touching appliances in the history of the LA Rock.”

Thus, with a considerable degree of confidence, it can be argued that the silent departure of the audience from the premiere of Turandot is simply a mistake that appeared in one of the articles or books and replicated in Russian literature.