James Tobin wrote:

>...  Two or three decades ago someone published an article, in Musical
>America, I think, saying that Puccini was a Fascist and expressed cruelty
>in his music.

However that may be, Turandot doesn't strike me as a case in point.  The
way I get it, Puccini became interested in the story after seeing a staging
in Berlin of Carlo Gozzi's drama, in the form of a tale, that Friedrich
Schiller later "ameliorated" into his "Turandot, Prinzessin von China."
Neither Gozzi, who was a Venetian count (d.1802), nor Friedrich Schiller
are even faintly relevant to fascism, and Puccini died too early, 1924,
or only two years after the March on Rome, to have stood much chance of
affliction.  Besides, the world premiere of P.'s "Turandot" at the Scala,
was directed and conducted by Arturo Toscanini, about as confirmed and
eminent a musical anti-fascist as there ever was.

Denis Fodor