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Puccini, Turandot: Soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 22.12.08. (JPr)

This opening night of the 15th revival of Andrei Serban’s production (premièred at the Los Angeles Olympics and first seen at Covent Garden in 1984) marked the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth on 22 December 1858.

Puccini was attracted to Carlo Gozzi’s 1762 play because an exotic setting had already proved successful for him with Madama Butterfly and the plot was less realistic than his other works. He was also fascinated by Turandot, an icily cruel princess, who is very different to his other principal female characters most of whom had been sweet and obedient creations doomed to suffer and sometimes die for love. The composer was particularly taken by ‘The Unknown Prince’ Calaf’s ‘journey’ and how he ends the opera. In addition, he wanted from Adami and Simoni, his librettists, a wide variety of characters; Ping, Pang and Pong provide some light comic, albeit heavily ironic, relief and the doomed slave girl Liù (who is not in the original Gozzi story) was created to counterbalance the princess’s character. Finally there are possible autobiographical elements : is Calaf a picture of Puccini himself, is Turandot his wife Elvira and is Liù, the tragic Doria Manfredi of the infamous scandal?

The writing and composition of Turandot proved troublesome and took almost five years. The orchestration was almost complete and only the final duet (after Liù's death and the scene in which Turandot is transformed by Calaf's kiss into a warm-hearted human being capable of love) was missing early in 1924. On 4th November 1924, Puccini went to Brussels to be treated for a tumour in his throat and died on the 29th following an unsuccessful operation. So Turandot shared a common fate with a number of notable twentieth century operas such as Busoni’s Doktor Faust, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron and Alban Berg’s Lulu, all of them also left unfinished when their composers died.

José Cura as Calaf
 

Puccini's music for Turandot is in many respects his most advanced and most modern in style. While he was composing it,  Puccini saw the world première of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire in Florence an event which undoubtedly influenced him. Turandot is the product of early twentieth century Orientalism  - the fascination of the West with the ‘exotic’ cultures of the East – and  in order to create a more ‘realistic’ Chinese atmosphere, Puccini read many books on the culture and ceremonies of China. He also sought out real Chinese music to imitate. His two sources for this were a music box owned by a friend, and Chinese Music, a booklet by J.A. van Aalst, published in Shanghai in 1884. Puccini used folk songs only for the music of Ping, Pang, and Pong making their music the only light music in the entire opera and overall he used at least eight authentic Chinese tunes in Turandot. The pentatonic scale (the scale you get when you play just the black keys on the piano) creates an ‘eastern’ sound and ‘oriental’ sounding harmonies are produced by juxtaposing major and minor together. There are a lot of percussion effects.

All of this makes Turandot one of the most complex and original scores of the twentieth century. Every detail was illuminated by Nicola Luisotti’s exuberant conducting which perfectly blended brash dissonances with textural power and thrilling climaxes,  but which also allowed for refined detail such as the episode when the moon rises in Act I ,  Ping, Pang, Pong’s lamentations at the start of Act II and Liù’s funeral in Act III. I cannot remember hearing the Covent Garden orchestra perform this music better. The significantly augmented Royal Opera Chorus were their usual dependable selves and sang out lustily.  Together with the orchestra provided a rich dramatic background for the soloists.

Andrei Serban’s production, revived here  by Jeremy Sutcliffe, strives for some authenticity with its Chinese masks, costumes, pageantry, ceremonial dance and bloodthirsty savagery. The long red ribbons at the beginning, the single, two-tiered set for the brown robed chorus, and the dramatic masks of Turandot’s beheaded suitors with stylised silken blood, all look as vibrant as ever. The set seems to have been refurbished and painted rather darker than I remember it but looks as though it could go on for another 24 years. The performance is choreographed (by Kate Flatt and rehearsed by Ann Whitley) rather than directed and is mostly in sensuous slow-motion whilst the principal singers are generally left to their own devices. Highlights remain, such as when Liù’s funeral procession crosses the stage right at the end after Turandot and Calaf are united. It reminds everyone how callous the prince is,  since after all Liù dies because of her love for him -  a point made by José Cura (Calaf) in his interview with me.

Cura’s was a subdued unshowy performance befitting with his perception of Calaf as something of an emotionless ‘bastard’ willing to let Liù die so that he can continue to climb the social ladder. His voice is not lyrical but has a burnished baritonal middle and solid top and the culmination of his performance was an assuredly ardent, if somewhat strangely reflective, ‘Nessun dorma’.

Svetla Vassileva as Liù

Liù was Svetla Vassileva who sang radiantly yet with a touch of steel that suggested she might be a Turandot of the future herself. ‘Signore, ascolta’ and ‘Tu che di gel sei cinto’ embraced the audience with her character’s plight and were sung with great feeling.

Kostas Smoriginas, a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists programme, again impressed ; this time as the authoritative Mandarin.  Paata Burchuladze was superb as Timur and used his cavernous voice to good effect and Giorgio Caoduro, Ji-Min Park (another Jette Parker singer) and Alasdair Elliott were an energetic trio as Ping, Pang and Pong. Robert Tear in one of his last stage appearances,  was the venerable Emperor, just  as he had been when I first saw this staging in 1984.

Cura had been expressing his delight at having an athletic Turandot to sing with and with whom he could get more physical in the last duet, which made me recall how the late Franco Bonisolli leapt upon Gwyneth Jones’s Turandot in a performance of this same production in 1988 – apparently to her great surprise. Nothing like this was going to happen once the original Turandot (Iréne Theorin) was announced to be ill and was replaced by Elizabeth Connell currently singing the Mother in Hänsel und Gretel at Covent Garden. For a singer whose career is not far short of the 40 year mark,  the move is usually from singing the leading roles to performing  Mothers, ageing companions or servants yet Ms Connell has only just added Turandot to her repertoire. She does not move around the stage with great ease anymore but with this production and possibly with this role,  she doesn’t need to. What she does instead,  is to show us her character’s cruelty, petulance, fear and ultimately her melting love and burgeoning humanity very well indeed using the thing that matters most – her singing. Yes,  she did take a little time to find her best voice in ‘In questa reggia’ and her chest voice does not have the support that it once did,  but her top voice was warm, musically accurate and wobble-free. Every nuance of her words mattered and all her pronouncements were offered with imperious effect. This was a well-deserved opportunity for South African born Ms Connell to sing this role in the city she calls her home town - See her recent interview.

Jim Pritchard

Photos © Johan Persson

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