From Los Angeles Times:
Gli enigmi sono tre, una e la vita!li enigmi sono tre, una e la vita! What does the above mean? (“The riddles are three; life is one!”)
Where is it from? (The opera “Turandot.”)
Who is the latest musical sensation in China? (A dead Italian once scorned for his Orientalist fantasies about Asian women.)
Back in the 1960s and ’70s, when Italian opera was deemed a capitalist indulgence in China, no work was more despised than Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot.” Many Chinese thought the opera insulting, with its depiction of a despotic Chinese princess who has her suitors beheaded unless they can answer three riddles.
They’re singing a different tune these days.
