Royal Opera House
Mandarin – Michel de Souza
Liù – Eri Nakamura
Timur – Raymond Aceto
Calaf – Marco Berti
Ping – Dionysos Sourbis
Pang – David Butt Philip
Pong – Doug Jones
Turandot – Lise Lindstrom
Emperor Altoum – Alasdair Elliott
Soprano Solo I – Marianne Cotterill
Soprano Solo II – Anne Osborne
Andrei Serban (director)
Andrew Sinclair (revival
director)
Sally Jacobs (designs)
F. Mitchell Dana (lighting)
Kate Flatt (choreography)
Tatiana Novaes Coelho
(choreologist)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus
master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera
House
Henrik Nánási (conductor)
The thawing of the Princess
Turandot is somewhat more abrupt than mine, but I think it is fair to say that
I am rather more favourably inclined towards Puccini than once I was. (Not that
I was ever entirely hostile.) This was, however, the first time I had had, or rather
had taken, the opportunity to see Turandot
in the theatre. In such circumstances, it is more likely than not that there
will be something to enjoy, and here there was, but it would be difficult to
claim that pleasures – if that be the right word for this nastiest of operas –
extended beyond the musical.
It was a pity that there had
not been something theatrically to occupy one’s mind, however small; I could
not help but think that, had this been one’s first encounter with Puccini, or
indeed with opera at all, one might well have been so bemused by the ludicrous
nature of what one saw, that that would have been the end of that. A friend,
who I had not realised was also present at this performance, informed me that
he had left after the first interval, longing for some Regietheater; one does not have to be Frank Castorf to understand
why. I spent much of the first act vainly hoping for a sign of irony. Maybe it
looked different thirty years ago, or was looked at differently. But even if Sally Jacobs’s designs – understatedly described
by the Royal Opera as ‘colourful’ – are somehow left on one side, even if one
somehow erases one’s mind of anything relating to Edward Said, let alone to
subsequent orientalist theory, even if one overcomes the strange feeling that
what one sees has more in common with a decidedly politically-incorrect Russian
book of fairy-tales than with anything meaningfully ‘Chinese’, the rest of the
direction, whether this be Serban’s or Andrew Sinclair’s doing, lies so far
beyond the merely ‘dated’ that it seems older than the opera itself. ‘Older’, that is, not in the sense of evoking
something ancient, but because one wonders how much more restoration the sets
and costumes can take before they simply collapse. Otto Schenk seems almost
avant-garde by comparison. The dance routines threaten to make Puccini’s score
sound like a model of multicultural sensitivity. As for the weird procession at
the end...
My fear, however, would be
not so much that this is a dinosaur that has managed to evade extinction that
must come any day soon, but rather that it is being presented as a sop to a
decidedly non-critical audience, who might find Wagner’s accusation against
Meyerbeer of ‘effect without cause’ less challenging than bothersome. Visible –
and audible – sitting back in seats for ‘Nessun dorma’ tended, sadly, to support that view. Once
again Boulez’s ‘solution’ to the problem of opera houses sprang to mind.
The orchestra, however, was
on good – good, rather than excellent, but nevertheless good – form. Henrik Nánási’s conducting was strong in some
respects: the extraordinary radicalism, at least for a composer of Italian
opera, of Puccini’s harmony and orchestration shone through. Nánási was willing
to linger, without losing track of where the musical drama was heading. There
was often, though, a lack of sharpness, which would have lifted the performance
and offered something more keenly responsive to the viciousness of the work.
That is not, of course, to say that one wishes for something hard-driven or
soulless, however much one might wonder whether that might be precisely what Turandot deserves, but there were times
when this veered towards the listless. Choral singing was excellent throughout,
yet another credit to the Royal Opera Chorus and Renato Balsadonna.
Much of the solo singing was
to be admired too. Save for slight unsteadiness – quite pardonable, given the
cruelty of this entry – upon her first phrase or two, Lise Lindstrom proved
more or less beyond reproach as the ice princess. I use the cliché, since the
final melting was a masterclass in how to present what I hesitate to call
development of character, so shall settle for Puccini’s manipulative genius,
breathtaking here even by his standards. The cold strength of much of the
performance finally revealed a beating heart: too late, of course, for Liù, or
indeed for any semblance of humanity within the work as a whole. Eri Nakamura
gave the best performance I have heard from her as the slave girl, often
exquisitely shaded; again, try as one might, it was more or less impossible not
to be moved, even as one knew one was being shamelessly manipulated. (Strauss
almost seems to have a conscience in such matters when compared with Puccini.) Marco
Berti’s voice is of the type considered almost de rigeur for Calaf. There is, to be fair, considerable dynamic shading,
yet I could not help but wish for something a little less rigid, whether in
vocal or stage terms, though the latter may of course have been someone else’s
fault. One would have to search far and wide for a more irritating and indeed
offensive trio than the ghastly Ping, Pong, and Pang, but Dionysos Sourbis,
David Butt Philip, and Doug Jones did what they could to bring their words to
life. (Their stage business I cannot really bring myself to describe.) Alasdair
Elliott certainly sounded like an elderly emperor, though was perhaps a little
too much on the frail side. Still, the audience appeared to love the
melodramatic – I fear that is far too weak a word – descent of his throne from
the ceiling.
Alfano’s wretched ending was
employed, though I suppose Berio and Serban might have made for odd bedfellows.
If, however, there was little to be gleaned from the staging beyond avid connoisseurship
of shameless kitsch, the performance arguably did its job in reminding one
quite how wondrously repellent this opera is. One may, arguably should,
disapprove, but it certainly holds the attention more than the last opera I had
seen staged at Covent Garden: Britten’s
deathly Gloriana. There are
different ways to lie, as Michael
Tanner’s perspicacious review of this Turandot would have it, beyond redemption;
better, surely, for the problem to lie with morality than competence. To conclude, a plea that will doubtless fall upon deaf ears: next time might we not have a Turandot that proffers both musical and ethical redemption? Busoni would be our man.
