Franco Alfano

Although he composed over a dozen operas, Franco Alfano is today most likely remembered for his 1926 completion of Puccini’s unfinished opera Turandot (1924). The suggestion had come from an admiring Toscanini following the success of Alfano’s exotically perfumed La leggenda di Sakùntala (1921). Born in Posillipo in 1875, Alfano followed studies in Naples and Leipzig (where he met Grieg) by securing his first major operatic hit with Risurrezione (1904), a work based on Tolstoy. Other literary adaptations followed, including L'ombra di Don Giovanni (1914), the Balzac-inspired Madonna Imperia (1927), and Cyrano de Bergerac (1936). Musically, Alfano was of an inherently Romantic disposition, a master of muscular yet colourful orchestration who was possessed of an almost cinematographic sweep, while simultaneously a man who had a talent for musical theatre. His symphonic works are worth seeking out, alongside the chamber music that includes an artful Cello Sonata & Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano (1932), and the voluptuously conceived Piano Quintet of 1945. Alfano composed almost up to his death in 1954, making music stylistically wedded to the early years of the century.