Fixing a problematic opera ending

I finished the book This is Why They Hate Us by Aaron Aceves. I’ll start by saying I didn’t figure out what the title had to do with the story. This novel is narrated by Enrique, also known as Quique. He is of Mexican descent living in Los Angeles. He is bisexual and currently into boys, though he is still mostly in the closet. The story takes place from the end of his junior year in high school, through the summer, and into the start of his senior year. His best friend is Saleem and he’s also deeply smitten with him but is quite afraid to try to upgrade their relationship from best friends to lovers. He’s afraid he’ll lose his friend if Saleem isn’t gay. And since Saleem is Muslim he may be gay yet not feel he can act on it. So Quique decides to look for a boyfriend elsewhere in hopes of forgetting Saleem. There are three classmates in his school he thinks are hot who he might try to discover if they’re gay. Tyler is a white boy, Manny is Latino, and Ziggy is biracial black/white. As the story got going and Quique lays out his plan for the summer it sounded rather juvenile (well, yeah, they are 17). Thankfully, the story is much deeper than that. Quique does a lot of maturing over the summer. He deals with a mental health crisis from a few years before and starts coming out. His three prospects also teach him a few things, though not always in a nice way. Yeah, from the start we know where this is going. The book was published in 2022, though one scene resonates quite well with today. A few years before that summer Saleem is in a world history class. The teacher talked about the founding of Israel. Saleem asks what happened to the people already on that land? He knows because they were his ancestors. Nina Totenberg is NPR’s reporter of the Supreme Court. She is also their opera reporter. And she has a seven minute report on this weekend’s offering at the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center. The opera is Turandot by Giacomo Puccini. This opera is famous, as are his operas Tosca, and Madame Butterfly. The famous bit of Turandot is the aria Nessun dorma featured in arena concerts by Pavarotti and the Three Tenors, and also by any tenor able to sink his teeth into it. The whole opera is lush and filled with beautiful tunes. But Turandot has a big problem – it’s ending. And part of it is Puccini died before he got to the ending. Another composer finished it, but Puccini didn’t give much indication of how it should end (I haven’t heard what the librettist had finished and what he hadn’t). The plot is this: Turandot, a princess of China, declared she will not welcome any man unless he answers three riddles. If he gets it wrong he is executed. Amazingly, lots of men make the attempt. Then here comes Calaf, a disguised prince. He gets the riddles right and poses one of his own – find out who he is. That Nessun dorma is him bragging that he’s won. The usual ending, described by Francesca Zambello, the artistic director of the Washington National Opera, is: “He kisses her and she's like, okay, fine, I'll do whatever you want.” Yeah, rather sexist. So, now that the opera is coming off copyright, Zambello commissioned a new ending. Susan Soon He Stanton, who won an Emmy for her work on TV's “Succession” did the libretto, though had to be reminded that singing a text takes about three times as long to speak it. For the music there is Grammy Award-winning composer Christopher Tin. Both are Chinese American – yeah, another problem of the opera is the 1920s European view of China (Madame Butterfly, set in Japan, has the same problem). The new ending also explains more why Turandot hated men. And Calaf brags less and discovers love is worth sacrificing for. He talks to Turandot about not being vengeful, but loving and forgiving. The NPR link also has many photos of the production, including showing that the setting has also been updated to a modern China. I also have a link to an article by Olivia Giovetti in the Kennedy Center program book about the opera and its new ending.