Turandot or the Whitewashers' Congress is an epic

Non-Aristotelian drama

Non-Aristotelian drama, or the 'epic form' of the drama, refers to a kind of play whose dramaturgical structure departs from the features of classical tragedy in favour of the features of the epic, as defined in each case by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics .The German...

 comedy by the German modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 playwright Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

. It was written during the summer of 1953 in Buckow

Buckow

Buckow is a town in the district Märkisch-Oderland, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated at the Schermützelsee lake, northwest of Müncheberg and east of the Berlin centre...

 and substantially revised in light of a brief period of rehearsals in 1954, though it did not receive its first production until several years after Brecht's death. It premièred on 5 February 1969 at the Zürich Schauspielhaus

Schauspielhaus Zürich

The Schauspielhaus Zürich is one of the most prominent and important theatres in the German-speaking world. It is also known as "Pfauenbühne" after its location on the Pfauen Square in Zürich, Switzerland. The large theatre has 750 seats...

, in a production directed by Benno Besson

Benno Besson

Benno Besson was a Swiss actor and director. He had great success as director at Volksbühne Berlin, Deutsches Theater and Berliner Ensemble in East-Berlin, where he went by an invitation of Bertolt Brecht in 1949...

 and Horst Sagert, with music by Yehoshua Lakner

Yehoshua Lakner

Yehoshua Lakner was a composer of contemporary classical music...

.

The story is based on Carlo Gozzi

Carlo Gozzi

Carlo, Count Gozzi was an Italian playwright.Born in Venice, he came from an old Venetian family from the Republic of Ragusa...

's commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...

play Turandot (1762), a production of which Brecht saw in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 in 1932, directed by Yevgeny Vakhtangov

Yevgeny Vakhtangov

Yevgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov was a Russian actor and theatre director who founded the Vakhtangov Theatre. He was a friend and mentor of Michael Chekhov.Vakhtangov was born to Armenian-Russian parents from Ossetia in Vladikavkaz...

. From 1930 onwards, Brecht began to develop a version of his own, which became part of a wider complex of projects exploring the role of intellectual

Intellectual

An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

s (or "Tuis

Tui (intellectual)

A Tui is an intellectual who sells his or her abilities and opinions as a commodity in the marketplace or who uses them to support the dominant ideology of an oppressive society...

," as he called them) in a capitalist

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 society. Brecht's protagonist

Protagonist

A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

 is coarse, lacking the whimsical charm of Gozzi's portrayal and the aspiration to nobility in Schiller's

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

 adaptation (1801).

The play had its British première in an amateur production in 1970 and a professional production at the Oxford Playhouse in 1971.