World premiere: 25 April 1926, Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre and premiere of this production: 25 July 2002
Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes
The performance has one interval
Turandot was Giacomo Puccini's final opera, and he left it at the stage when it was almost complete.
His death in 1924 heralded the end of the era of verism, it was a farewell to Italian grand opera. At that time, avant-garde art was already witnessing the collapse of the tonal system, and composers were abandoning established vocalisation – with sweeping cantilena and upper accent notes, and the charm of a melody losing its significance, giving way to the beauty of structure and the complexity of formal rules.
In 1920 Puccini had seen a production by Max Reinhardt based on a tale by Carlo Gozzi and conceived the idea of composing an opera based on its plot. He himself was involved in adapting the work into a libretto, though the finale, the part where love was to be awakened in Turandot's icy heart, was something the composer did not live to complete. Using surviving rough drafts, it was finished by Franco Alfano, its ending adopting the “happy-ever-after” format. This coincided with Puccini's own concept, although as a result the finale entered something of a contradiction with what had already occurred in the opera's two and a half preceding acts. This contradiction emerged from an attempt to combine the fairytale with a verist drama – things that almost diametrically oppose one another, each of them having its own logic of construction. Can one justify Turandot, who because of some psychological trauma avenges herself on the entire male sex? How can Calaf love Turandot after she orders the innocent, devoted and timid Liù be tortured, Liù whom the protagonists entirely forget? Luciano Berio attempted to provide an answer later when he wrote his own tragic finale, though it is still Alfano's version that remains most widely used.
The music of verism demands powerful voices that can convey to the highest degree possible the fervency of emotions and, with their sound, cut through the immense and full brass instruments mass of the orchestra. In this opera two of these voices are required: a lyrical-dramatic or simply a dramatic tenor and a dramatic soprano. When two such voices come together in combat (this happens in the riddle scene), we hear verist opera at its apogee.
French stage director Charles Roubaud trained as a graphic designer and has vast experience of working in advertising. Advertising as a genre requires the maximum of compressed expression, vivid and not overburdened with complexities. Traces of this approach may be seen in his production: the opera has been constructed logically, and it has a simple yet beautiful imagistic system. The characters in their oriental costumes act against a background of specific colour schemes that are closely fitted to reflect the mood of the music. A range of black complements the ominous beginning, the Emperor Altoum appears in the richest gold and the celebratory and vivid finale is rendered in scarlet light. Denis Velikzhanin
Musical materials provided by G. RlCORDl & CO., Bühnen- und Musikverlag GmbH, Berlin (Germany)
Sponsored by the Delzell Foundation (USA)
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