APPENDIX
TURANDOT’S DREAM
In the acted performance of this play, the third act commences with a scene which sets forth, wholly in pantomime, a dream of Turandot, representing—by suggestions of mystic light and sound—the state of her distracted mind, trying to solve the riddle of Keedur Khan.
The pantomime takes place in two imaginative settings—a mountain top and an oriental street—blending the one into the other.
Out of darkness first appears the outline of the dark summit, against a blue-gray radiance of sky. Etched upon this Zelima enters, like a shadow-phantom, beckoning. Following her to strange music Turandot appears, unsubstantial as shadow, painted opaque on the glowing background, like some silhouetted, featureless figure on an ancient vase, imbued as by magic with motion and antique gesture.
Bowing in awe above the brink of darkness, the figure of Turandot is led downward (and forward) into obscuring mists, tinged with green lights and gules. Out of the mist, voices—shrill, bizarre, bell-toned, menacing, mysterious—echo the words: “Khan, Keedur Khan, Khan, Khan!”
While the female forms grope below, the figure of Capocomico now appears on the summit, beckoning to his four maskers, whose shadow-forms gesticulate weirdly toward Turandot.
Through the interpretive music, the teasing words of the riddle are chanted by the varied voices, amid strange hiatuses filled with mocking laughter.
Lastly, alone, appears the shadow form of Calaf, who follows the Maskers downward into the mist, searching with arms outgroped toward Turandot.
There, as the unreal forms pass and disappear, the silhouette of Capocomico stands fluting on the mountain top, while below echoes the basso and falsetto laughter of the Maskers, and the low taunting cry: “Keedur Khan!”
As this tableau shuts in darkness, there comes vaguely to light in the foreground a street scene. Here, at a gateway, beggars with yokes are huddled; before the gate, a moving frieze of dream figures, noiseless, pass fantastically: Chinese soldiers, high stepping; Turandot again, downcast, gliding like a captive with Zelima; Calaf, swift searching in pursuit; the Maskers, lithe, grotesque, pointing after him; rearguarded by Capocomico—blithely dominant in gesture, triumphant with fantasy.
Last of the dream images he also fades in darkness, out of which rise the merry strains of a chorus:
and Turandot, sobbing beside Zelima on her bench in the harem, awakes from her haunting dream of Keedur Khan.
Zelima bends over her.
“Alas, my lady, what ails you? You cried in your swoon!”
The merry voices of the Maskers outside sing louder.
“Oh, I have dreamed, Zelima! Drive them away!”
Thus follows the first spoken scene of Act Third, as here printed.
As acted, the stage management and lighting of this pantomime have been movingly devised by Mr. J. C. Huffman.
Here in description its visionary quality can only be suggested.
1. Since the date of the commission for my play, the translation of “Turandot” by Jethro Bithell has been published in America by Duffield & Company, New York, so that the Gossi-Schiller-Voellmueller dramatic version of the folk-tale is thus made available for English readers.
2. See Appendix.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Table of Contents added by transcriber.
- Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
- Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.