Puccini's Turandot: Bewitched, Bothered, And Beheaded

The pain and fear of trauma can have a dramatic effect on your desire for love and intimacy.

This is true for Puccini’s Turandot, the titular ice princess who cuts off her feelings… and the heads of her suitors. In her first aria, “In questa reggia,” Turandot explains that she will avenge the rape and murder of her ancestress from thousands of years ago, and that she is determined never to be possessed by any man.

In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore the truth at the heart of this aria: that time doesn’t heal all wounds, and that some are played out and recreated with every generation. At the end of the show, Christine Goerke sings “In questa reggia” from the Metropolitan Opera stage.

The Guests 

Soprano Christine Goerke loves the challenge of playing characters that seem unsympathetic, uncovering their complexity and somehow winning over the audience by the end of the opera. This is one of the many things that draws her to Turandot. 

Actor Anna Chlumsky became an opera fanatic after working on the Broadway show Living on Love with co-star Renée Fleming. Turandot is a particular family favorite, and the former “Veep” star enjoys watching Puccini’s grand spectacle over breakfast with her daughters. 

Will Berger is the author of Puccini Without Excuses, a funny and informative guide to one of opera’s greatest composers. Berger is equal parts opera buff and metalhead, bringing his love of intense storytelling to his work as a writer and media commentator for The Metropolitan Opera.

Om Podcasten

Aria Code is a podcast that pulls back the curtain on some of the most famous arias in opera history, with insight from the biggest voices of our time, including Roberto Alagna, Diana Damrau, Sondra Radvanovsky, and many others. Hosted by Grammy Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens, Aria Code is produced in partnership with The Metropolitan Opera. Each episode dives into one aria — a feature for a single singer — and explores how and why these brief musical moments have imprinted themselves in our collective consciousness and what it takes to stand on the Met stage and sing them. A wealth of guests—from artists like Rufus Wainwright and Ruben Santiago-Hudson to non-musicians like Dame Judi Dench and Dr. Brooke Magnanti, author of The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl—join Rhiannon and the Met Opera’s singers to understand why these arias touch us at such a human level, well over a century after they were written. Each episode ends with the aria, uninterrupted and in full, recorded from the Met Opera stage. Aria Code is produced in partnership with WQXR, The Metropolitan Opera and WNYC Studios.