Editing Turandot (section)

===Completion of the score after Puccini's death===
When Puccini died, the first two of the three acts were fully composed, including the orchestration. Puccini had composed and fully orchestrated Act Three up until Liù's death and funeral cortege. In the sense of finished music, this was the last music composed by Puccini.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fisher|first=Burton D.|title=Puccini Companion: The Glorious Dozen: Turandot|year=2007|publisher=Opera Journeys Publishing|page=24}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Ashbrook|first=William|title=The Operas of Puccini|url=https://archive.org/details/operasofpuccini0000ashb|url-access=registration|year=1985|publisher=Cornell University Press by arrangement with Oxford University Press|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/operasofpuccini0000ashb/page/224 224]|isbn=9780801493096}}</ref> He left behind 36 pages of sketches on 23 sheets for the end of ''Turandot''. Some sketches were in the form of "piano-vocal" or "short score", including vocal lines with "two to four staves of accompaniment with occasional notes on orchestration."<ref name="Ashbrook and Powers3">{{harvnb|Ashbrook|Powers|1991|p=224}}</ref> These sketches provided music for some, but not all, of the final portion of the libretto.

Puccini left instructions that [[Riccardo Zandonai]] should finish the opera. Puccini's son Tonio objected, and eventually [[Franco Alfano]] was chosen to flesh out the sketches after [[Vincenzo Tommasini]] (who had completed [[Arrigo Boito|Boito]]'s ''[[Nerone (Boito)|Nerone]]'' after the composer's death) and [[Pietro Mascagni]] were rejected. Puccini's publisher Tito Ricordi II decided on Alfano because his opera ''[[Sakùntala|La leggenda di Sakùntala]]'' resembled ''Turandot'' in its setting and heavy orchestration.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.concertoperaboston.org/turandot2009.html| title = ''Turandot'': Concert Opera Boston}}</ref> Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the libretto, which was not considered complete even by Puccini. After the severe criticisms by Ricordi and the conductor Arturo Toscanini, he was forced to write a second, strictly censored version that followed Puccini's sketches more closely, to the point where he did not set some of Adami's text to music because Puccini had not indicated how he wanted it to sound. Ricordi's real concern was not the quality of Alfano's work; he wanted the end of ''Turandot'' to sound as if it had been written by Puccini. Of this version, about three minutes were cut for performance by Toscanini, and it is this shortened version that is usually performed today.