What is this woman in white that we're waiting for? Is she purity and virginity, or is she death?

From WQXR in the Metropolitan Opera, this is Ariaco. I'm Rianne Gins. You end up being the center

of a solar system and everything sort of spinning around you somehow. And it is thrilling,

it is terrifying, it is exhilarating. Every episode unwraps a single area so you can see what's inside.

Today it's in Questeredja, which means in this palace from Puccini's Tornado.

Then when she gets to seeing it's not look how nice I sing, it's here's why I sing.

Now this season on Ariacoad we've been focused on the many forms of desire, how it shows up in our own

lives and how the best moments in opera express those feelings. This episode is sort of the upside

down of all that. It's about suppressing desire, you know, cutting yourself off from your own feelings

and the rest of the world. And sometimes it's for good, healthy and self protective reasons.

So let's talk about Tornado, Jocomo Puccini's final opera.

Tornado is known as the ice princess. She's sworn off all intimacy and love forever. And she's not

just playing hard to get, she's legitimately very hard to get. She presents suitors with three

riddles and if they don't solve them all correctly she puts their heads on spikes and adds them to

her growing collection. It's kind of like the Bachelorette but a little bit bloodier.

So in walks the tenor, Prince Calliff, with his father Timura and the slave girl Liu in tow.

Now this dude obviously likes a challenge because he's undeterred by the prospect of the

whole heads on spikes thing, heads on spikes just just reiterating that. He's got swagger and he

wants to win the princess so he's up for the riddles.

Now it seems simple enough but Tornado's entrance aria, Inquistaregia, shows us the story is deeper

than it appears. In the aria, Tornado explains to Prince Calliff why she rejects love.

It turns out her ancestors, Princess Lu Ling, was defeated, raped and killed in this palace.

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