BY MARION LIGNANA ROSENBERG [Newsday, 1 November 2005]

Philosopher and novelist Catherine Clément defined opera as a "spectacle thought up to adore, and also to kill, the feminine character." Puccini's "Turandot" (1926), one of the last operas to enter the standard repertory, stands as one of starkest and most seductive monuments to the form's misogynistic impulses.