At the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Turin, Luciano Pavarotti appeared to deliver a transcendent live performance of the famous tenor aria from Puccini's Turandot, but in the sub-freezing air he was lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track to protect his vocal cords. This episode traces the biography of that single piece of music, beginning with the opera's dark 1920s premise: a princess who beheads suitors who fail her three riddles, an unknown prince named Calaf who answers them all and then wagers his life on her discovering his name by dawn, and a decree that no one in the city may sleep until he is found.

The conversation explains why the aria's G major key and heroic tenor writing encode inevitable victory, why the climactic high B4 that modern tenors hold for as long as their lungs allow was written by Puccini as a fleeting six ...