Italy Puccini, Turandot: Kids’s Refrain (director: Stefania Rinaldi), Refrain and Orchestra of Teatro di San Carlo / Dan Ettinger (conductor). Livestreamed on medici.television from Teatro di San Carlo, Naples. 9.12.2023. (JPr)
Manufacturing:
Director – Vasily Barkhatov
Surroundings – Zinovy Margolin
Costumes – Galya Solodovnikova
Lighting – Alexander Sivaev
Refrain grasp – Piero Monti
Forged:
Turandot – Sondra Radvanovsky
Emperor Altoum – Nicola Martinucci
Timur – Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Calaf – Yusif Eyvazov
Liù – Rosa Feola
Ping – Alessio Arduini
Pang – Gregory Bonfatti
Pong – Francesco Pittari
A Mandarin – Sergio Vitale
First Handmaid – Valeria Attianese
Second Handmaid – Linda Airoldi
The Prince of Persia – Vasco Maria Vagnoli
Like London buses operas usually come alongside in twos, so fairly quickly after a Paris Turandot (assessment right here) Naples’s Teatro di San Carlo opened their 2023-2024 season with Puccini’s unfinished opera devoted each to the centenary of the composer’s beginning in 1924 and that of Maria Callas in 1923. Sought-after Russian director, Vasily Barkhatov, with a kind of fashionable manufacturing which he in all probability had the thought for even earlier than being requested to do any opera specifically. His Konzept might have been used to stage any variety of operas with Lohengrin being high of the listing.
There are quotations from Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Ovid’s story of Orpheus and Eurydice from his Metamorphoses, respectively, at the beginning of acts one and two, the importance of which is able to resonate extra for others than me. Extra intriguingly we see on movie Timur’s funeral within the Church of San Lorenzo after which Turandot and Calaf (in fashionable gown after all) driving again from it. Turandot says how she hates funerals, knew Timur would have needed Calaf to be with Liù and was blamed for her suicide. Regardless of Calaf saying he nonetheless needs to marry Turandot; she claims he doesn’t love her now and at that time the automotive crashes. The broken automotive is lowered on the stage because the paramedics get to work on Calaf on a stretcher one among whom is the Mandarin because the opera correct (?) now begins.
We enter a wierd world – bracketed by reed beds and inside, what seems to be, a ruined abbey – populated by pagan figures à la The Wicker Man or tribal Africa from instances previous. Figures enter dragging small canoes and initially Timur and Liù have cone-shaped helmets on their heads woven, I assume, from the reeds. Calaf is in black leather-based and appears like Batman however with a ‘C’ on his chest. A practical working theatre is now lowered down with medical doctors working to avoid wasting Calaf’s life after the crash and we are going to see a distraught Turandot wanting on. The ministers, Ping, Pang, Pong, have bird-like carnival masks and Liù has pink hair and a white gown with small dragonflies as its motif. At vital factors within the story there can be a picture of Liù chopping herself. The window wanting into the working theatre may have numerous issues projected onto it in the course of the opera and when Calaf lastly requires Turandot he picks up a brick and smashes the glass. The crashed automotive comes again down because the act ends.
As Act II begins there may be some messing about by Ping, Pang, Pong with a wreath, garland, small lanterns and a picket field earlier than they retreat to the working theatre and there are some magic methods involving the physique on the desk. A bejewelled Emperor Altoum enters on one of many skiffs encased in a glass coffin with two ‘Scots Guards’ with clown-like cranium faces. We realise quickly that it’s now Turandot who’s being operated on in a ‘sliding doorways’ improvement. The onstage Turandot dons a studded skirt and golden armour and appears, nearly however not fairly, a Marvel Girl determine. Calaf seems to have a few of his former recollections and appears as if he’s attempting to remind Turandot who he’s, and she is going to look as if she has related recollections in Act III. Because the riddles are efficiently answered neon indicators Speranza, Sangue and Turandot are lowered and because the second act ends the automotive descends in entrance of the ice princess.
The ultimate act begins and at first, we see Calaf at Turandot’s bedside then Turandot’s at his. The white-robed Calaf can be threatened with scythes and there’s no executioner and after Liù sacrifices herself – slightly than reveal Calaf’s identify – Timur sings ‘Liù! Rise up!’ whereas she simply walks off the stage with a cone helmet on her head. We’ll then see her and Timur rise on the again every in a small boat. As we begin the Alfano completion Turandot is stripped of her armour, slightly like Brünnhilde in Siegfried, after which Calaf launches a full-on assault on her which she resists earlier than melting into his arms. The automotive goes up and down and the phrase Amore seems. [Spoiler alert] the ultimate movie excerpt exhibits that in any case Turandot and Calaf truly survive the crash and reconcile with a loving kiss whereas their white-robed counterparts onstage sink down and watch the blissful ending on the display.
Sondra Radvanovsky, who withdrew from Turandot in Paris, is comparatively new to the title function, and he or she sings Turandot with all of the steely, regular tone required, a lot Italianate heat, fearless high notes, emotional depth and conviction; allied to an uncommon – for this character – womanly manner. Yusif Eyvazov’s climactic cash word for ‘Nessun Dorma’ rang out and elsewhere he sang cleanly and precisely and along with his sturdy voice exhibiting some easy fantastic thing about tone while his performing was assured each on movie and stage. Nonetheless, essentially the most nuanced performing and singing got here – because it often does – from the singer portraying Liù, this time Rosa Feola, who sang her arias with beautiful color and phrasing together with essentially the most delicate pianissimos attainable. Feola was a wonderfully devoted slave woman although the subtlety of this efficiency was at odds with a lot that was occurring round her. Alexander Tsymbalyuk sang with distinction, gravitas and deep feeling as a beige-suited, all-seeing Timur, Sergio Vitale was an authoritative Mandarin and the characterfully acted Ping, Pang, and Pong of Alessio Arduini, Gregory Bonfatti and Francesco Pittari had been sung with precision and panache. Now in his eighties, Nicola Martinucci – a famend Calaf in his youth – returned to Turandot as a venerable Altoum. The refrain sounded vocally sturdy and had been dramatically spectacular.
Dan Ettinger to his credit score pressed straight on after ‘Nessun Dorma’ and guided a advantageous Teatro di San Carlo Orchestra by way of a Turandot stuffed with intricate element; conducting with vigour, verve, ahead movement and due sensitivity to the opera’s lushness and dramatic energy.
Jim Pritchard
