Short answers, pulled from the story.
The character known as Calaf stands alone in the moonlit palace gardens of Puccini's unfinished opera Turandot. He solves three riddles posed by Princess Turandot to win her hand in marriage but refuses to reveal his name before dawn.
Luciano Pavarotti transformed this operatic piece into a worldwide phenomenon through his 1972 recording and subsequent performances. BBC television used his version as the theme song for their coverage of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy.
Tenors now hold the final A longer than written to create emotional impact during live performances. In the original score, the B note appears as a sixteenth note while the A follows as a whole note without explicit sustained duration requirements.
Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne co-wrote the 1989 song A Love So Beautiful using the melody from this aria. Other adaptations include versions by Aretha Franklin, Manowar, Chris Botti, Antony Hegarty, Jeff Beck, Nathan Pacheco, Andrea Bocelli, Jennifer Hudson, HNK Rijeka, Timmy Trumpet, and Steve Aoki.
The trio performed together at three subsequent World Cup Finals: Los Angeles in 1994, Paris in 1998, and Yokohama in 2002. Their album achieved triple platinum status in the United States alone following their initial collaboration before the 1990 World Cup Final in Rome.