Turandot, Opera Holland Park, 23 June 2026

Images: Pablo Strong

Princess Turandot – Anne Sophie Duprels
Calaf – José de Eça
Liù – Fflur Wyn
Timur – Jihoon Kim
Ping – Josef Jeongmeen Ahn
Pang – Joseph Buckmaster
Pong – Zwakele Tshabalala
Emperor Altoun – Robert Burt
Mandarin – Wonsick Oh
Prince of Persia – Jamie Formoy
Young Turandot – Lara Ronxin Quattrone

Opera Holland Park Youth Chorus (chorus master: Joe Cummings)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Richard Harker)

City of London Sinfornia

Naomi Woo (conductor)

Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and the centenary of Puccini’s death, Opera Holland Park completed its set of the composer’s operas with a semi-staging of his final, unfinished work, Turandot. One might wish for a full staging, but one cannot have everything—and relatively little was lost. This made for a fitting crown to a season far from over, or perhaps better an extended encore to its new Fanciulla del West.

Anne-Sophie Duprels and José de Eça (previously Dick Johnson) came together to do something strikingly both similar and different as Turandot and Calaf. Their performances proved to be on a similarly outstanding level too, once again as fine a dramatic soprano and tenor as I can recall hearing at Holland Park—and considerably superior to those one might encounter at many of the opera firmament’s starriest houses. Whatever the dramaturgical depravity of the work – a big ‘whatever’ – both navigated its difficult, some might say impossible, relationship between fantasy and realism with all the fine attention to words, line, and their combination one could hope for. Duprels’s Turandot stood and sang on the threshold of a new life, slowly warming as much as melting. De Eça’s ardour swept all before it, Fflur Wyn and Jihoon Kim’s compassionate Liù and Timur included—which, alas, is as it should be. Wonsick Oh’s Mandarin was a chilling, yet human – indeed, human partly on that account – master of ceremonies, ably assisted by the protean solo-ensemblists of Josef Jeongmeen Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster, and Zwakele Tshabalala’s Ping, Pang, and Pong. Robert Burt’s Emperor Altoun and Jamie Formoy’s Prince of Persia afforded vivid, crucial, ‘smaller’ contributions.  

The role of the chorus is particular important in this opera. Opera Holland Park’s Chorus and Youth Chorus both impressed, both in themselves and in combination with the City of London Sinfonia, which again gave a mighty impression of a much larger band. The CLS now sound like old Puccini hands, which of course they are: warm, incisive, steely by turns, relishing and communicating the ripe post-Wagnerism and still astonishing modernism of the score in equal measure. If there were a few moments when any orchestral reduction would suffer by comparison with the full score, Tony Burke’s resourceful work, strange electronic organ intervention aside, contributed greatly to the success of the performance. A panoply of percussion enhanced the musical theatre of cruelty, as well as looking forward to the later twentieth century.

So too did Naomi Woo’s conducting, screwing up the tension where required and richly expansive where called for. Echoes of Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and others were relished, as, equally important, were the many cases in which Puccini takes the lead and others follow. It was difficult not to hear sentiments of Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, for instance, not least in the arguably still more twisted combination of torture and hope on offer here. As ever, that tantalising early morning conversation between Puccini and Schoenberg, when the ailing elder composer travelled to Florence for the Italian premiere of Pierrot Lunaire, hovered in the musical air. Holland Park’s celebrated peacock chorus contributed vocal embellishments, apparently as engaged with the sadistic dramaturgy as the rest of us. If Franco Alfano’s completion remains unsatisfactory, we cannot always hope for Berio. It has the merits at least of bringing to the surface in its listless wagnerismo parallels – arguably more than that – with Siegfried and Brünnhilde. 

Eleanor Burke’s direction was an equal partner in that (as, of course, were our Calaf and Turandot). The semi-staging concentrated, naturally, on character and narrative, and did so very well, whilst nonetheless framing their unfolding with reference to a child, the young princess, first having opened her music box and later handing it to the cruel princess she was to become. The importance both of childhood experience and of the problematical yet fascinating tension between Carlo Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte and Puccini’s realism was brought to our attention, for us to ponder and experience as our minds and mindsets permitted. This was not the place really for an overarching concept, though we were free to contribute one as we wished. Dress, as opposed to full-scale costume, was stylish in red and black. 

This was, then, another distinguished production from Opera Holland Park. A good number of audience members raised their hands at the outset, when asked by CEO and Director of Opera James Clutton if this were their first time. It is difficult to imagine they would have been anything other than greatly impressed, just as the rest of us were. For there was no mistaking the warmth and sincerity of the final applause. What next? Dare we hope for the aforementioned Dallapiccola, perhaps in tandem with Busoni’s Turandot? Someone should, at any rate.