It is the attention Pappano pays to crafting the contrasts between passages of intense sensuality and of mechanistic brutality, casting new light on a familiar score in the process, which really makes this a major recording event.

[Jaho] She possesses a rich lyric soprano and can float lovely high notes or sing them with full, ringing tone. Jaho has a particularly appealing vibrato, which she uses to good dramatic effect. In a role where the competition has been Tebaldi, Caballé, and Freni, Jaho can hold her head high...an essential recording of Turandot.

Sondra Radvanovsky, Ermonela Jaho and Jonas Kaufmann are the star cast, but the blazing orchestral detail unleashed by Pappano almost steals the show.

A Turandot for the ages? This recording holds its own against venerable competition and, in the original Alfano completion, is unique.

After Jaho, the orchestra and chorus are the best reasons for acquiring this set...Pappano revels in the modernist textures and ‘exotic’ colouration of Puccini’s post-Stravinsky orchestra and brings a sickly quality to the chorus’s ruminations on violent death...This Turandot may not outclass the finest classic recordings, but it has Alfano’s complete completion, and there is enough interpretative interest from the principals and Pappano to justify adding it to a collection.

[Radvanovsky's] is a nuanced performance that brings sympathy and depth to a potentially inscrutable character…Kaufmann offers plenty of subtlety and shading... For all the rousing singing on display, I should not neglect the contribution from the Santa Cecilia orchestra and moreover the guiding hand of Pappano: his pacing is spot-on throughout.

Pappano’s incandescent take on Puccini’s unfinished final opera is a cracker. Radvanovsky incarnates the imperious Turandot, Kaufmann is tender and ferocious as Calaf and Jaho brings heart-stopping vocal beauty to Liù.

The palette of orchestral colour is huge and constantly shifting, Pappano drawing out the music’s particular exotic atmosphere.

Kaufmann is an unstoppable and outsize force, bigger even than this opera demands. Once she arrives Radvanovsky is equally gripping, helped by Pappano using the long version of Franco Alfano’s completion...However, the first thing to hit the listener is the recording’s depth and the orchestra’s punch and glow.

The Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia plays brilliantly, and the interpretation underlines the opera’s modern features and symphonic cohesion without losing anything of the genuine Puccini- lyricism and Italian flow. Sondra Radvanovsky, Jonas Kaufmann and Ermonela Jaho create intense and nuanced roles, and the original Alfano finale adds value to the well-produced recording.