Story. See prior entries.
Conductor - Zubin Mehta; Turandot - Elena Pankratova, Timur - Rene Pape, Calaf - Yusif Eyvazov, Liu - Aida Garifullina.
These are screenshots from the Staatsoper website. In the above middle frame, instead of hitting a gong, Calaf turns on the giant light bub. In the lower frame, Turandot's father appears in military gear; I am not sure that's the best idea.
By this time the marionette has lost her legs, but grown two more pairs of arms. (Top frame). In the bottom frame, Ping, Pang & Pong dancing on a mound of skulls.
In the middle frame, Liu stabs herself.
Turandot coming out of Turandot.
It was only on the day of the concert that we realized it would be Zubin Mehta conducting, and that Rene Pape would be singing the role of Timur. Other than that, I didn't know any of the artists.
The set was dominated by (for lack of a better term) a marionette of Turandot. Anne read somewhere that it was supposed to represent the different moods of Turandot as they evolved during the show, although it would take a mind-reader to understand how they correlated. Her dress would open and close as needed to bring singers onto the stage, and that's how Turandot first appeared. As the opera progressed, the marionette's legs fell off, and she grew three pairs of arms. Her hair also fell off, and then her face - which exposed a skull. No idea what was being said, still somewhat fascinating. The rest of the set was quite simple and straightforward.
It was a good performance. The auditorium is quite small (capacity of 1300 per Wikipedia), so sound shouldn't be a problem. It wasn't, although I have a strong suspicion that it gets enhanced. Our seats were "hemmed" in by the balcony, so that perhaps amplified the sound in a strange way.
Liu as usual is the character one is most sympathetic with. There was no pretense that Garifullina isn't Chinese; Liu has long blonde hair and wears something that is at most remotely oriental. In any case, her singing was simply superb. "Signore ascolta" was moving, my only wish is that she should take advantage of the small hall and soften her voice a bit. There is PLEADING, and there is pleading.
Indeed, with the exception of Pape, the different principals seemed to try to outshout one another. The opera could use a bit more introspection from an acting point of view. "Nessun dorma" was tackled, seemingly effortlessly, a tribute to the quality of the tenor Eyvazov. [I found a YouTube video with him singing, most probably at the Met, in 2020; he had a softer take on the aria. Wonder how much is decided by the conductor.]
Chorus master and the chorus.
Curtain call. From left: Ping, Pang & Pong, Calaf, Turandot, Chorus Master, Conductor Zubin Mehta, Liu, Timur, and the Emperor.
During our 2019 visit to Germany we remarked to ourselves the tendency of Germans to make things brutal. In fact the last "live" Turandot we saw was at Deutsche Oper Berlin, where Liu was hung in effigy for a good part of the performance. The dark portrayal of Peter Grimes in Nuremberg somewhat confirmed our view of the German school of interpretation.
And how did the 86-year old Zubin Mehta do? We couldn't see him, but if the sound was any indication, he did great.
So we were quite surprised that no heads were lopped off, no people were graphically tortured; even Liu's suicide was done with only a little blood (she stabbed her own heart). The only twist was that towards the end Turandot drank poison, she dies at the end - though not before she belted out a few arias, though. In some way this might be a better ending (not that another person dying is a good thing) in that Calaf - so heartless in his complete indifference to Liu's love - ended up not getting what he wanted.
The opera started at 7:30 pm, so ended just a bit after 10 pm. There was still quite a bit of light out for us to find our way back to the hotel.
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