Munich Opera Festival (3) - Turandot, 30 June 2026

Nationaltheater

Images: Geoffroy Schied

Turandot – Sondra Radvanovsky
Altoum – Kevin Conners
Timur – Christian Van Horn
Calaf – Yonghoon Lee
Liù – Golda Schultz
Ping – Vitor Bispo
Pang – Tansel Akzeybek
Pong, Prince of Persia – Samuel Stopford
Mandarin – Bálint Szabó

Director – Carlus Pedrussa/La Fura dels Baus
Designs – Roland Olbeter
Costumes – Chu Oruz
Video – Franc Aleu
Lighting – Urs Schönebaum
Dramaturgy – Andrea Schönhofer, Rainer Karlitschek
Revival director – Lejila Selfried

Chorus, Children’s Chorus, and Extra Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Christoph Hell)
Extras, Children Extras, and Opera-Ballet of the Bavarian State Opera
Bavarian State Orchestra
Conductor – Andrea Battistoni

 

How curious. I learned what this Turandot had been about only upon consulting the programme post-performance. To be honest, I wish I had not done so. A quotation from La Fura dels Baus’s website will do: ‘In 2046 Europe is completely under Chinese rule. More than 30 years, China had rescued Europe from a financial crisis by buying up the debt, the ownership and natural resources. China is now the new world power. Turandot, the princess of ice control, as “Big Brother” every European, in order to pay back every last penny and pay off the debt of their parents’ generation.’ There is, I suppose, nothing like a bit – a lot – of paranoid Western Sinophobia to knock the work’s tamer racism into perspective. How this was depicted onstage I am at a loss to describe, but there you have it. 

For, if that sounds like the sort of thing a US Republican might utter or like to hear, what we saw often suggested something devised to hold the attention of an octogenarian man-baby president. There was certainly something going on all the time: less an evocation of the circus, or on engagement with the idea of one, commedia dell’arte or otherwise, than a circus in itself. If not so vacuous as, say, the Cirque du soleil, Carlus Pedrussa’s production was not so far off as it appeared to think itself. Breakdancers, acrobats, rollerskaters: someone was and often many people were doing something or many things all of the time. Quite why remained obscure, at least to me. I wondered whether some comment was being made about visual overload, and perhaps it was. But its relation to Turandot I could only hazard to tell you, until the final scene when things calmed down and the characters were directed rather well. Titles instructed us when to put on our 90s-style 3-D glasses, red and blue, which promised far more than they delivered. Apart from turning much of what we saw, well, red and blue, they enabled us to see a few objects flying around between us and the stage. Spectacle has always been a dramatic – or, indeed a postdramatic – tool in opera. Here, I am afraid, things tended towards Wagner’s celebrated denunciation of Meyerbeer as effect without cause.

Pedrussa’s decision – again, I quote La Fura dels Baus’s website – to present a Turandot ‘strictly pure and original’ mighty suggest conflict, productive or otherwise, with visual hyperactivity. Did it ‘respect the composer’s music’? Arguably so, in that it presented it as one might expect, save for one exception of ultra-‘respect’, ending ‘when the choir says “Liú poesía”.’ I had not heard it done this way before, so was curious to discover how it might turn out. Not very well, alas. It can plausibly be argued that there is no entirely satisfactory solution to this particular problem, not even Berio’s—and certainly not Franco Alfano’s. But this not only sounded quite at odds with what we had seen; it also presented an oddly muted winding down to an opera for which subtlety may hardly be a priority, but tonal dramaturgic strategy certainly is. Wozzeck stops rather than closes; no one would wish it otherwise. For Turandot more or less to peter out proved an unnecessary disappointment. 

Andrea Battistoni’s conducting of the Munich orchestra offered a proverbial curate’s egg. Tremendous Stravinskian precision early on, hammering home Puccini’s inheritance from Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, met with frustrating listlessness later on. If the reading never lost sight of the gorgeousness of the orchestral tapestry, relative lack of structural command doubtless contributed to the disappointment of the close. Much was loud, very loud, although considerably more varied in tone than Yonghoon Lee’s ear-splitting Calaf. Again, this may not be the world’s most subtle opera; nor is Calaf’s the most of operatic characterisation. There is nonetheless more to it, or should be, than unrelieved shouting. Sondra Radvanovsky was cold and imperious as Turandot, and considerably subtler in, say, ‘In questa reggia’. It was difficult not to feel the loss of additional music in her case. Golda Schultz’s Liù was heart-rending: lovelorn and sincere, a star-turn without trying to be a ‘star’. Christian Can Horn’s verbally and musically attentive Timur impressed similarly for adding much that was absent elsewhere. Indeed, all the singing, bar that of Lee, was of excellent quality or better, massed choral forces included. I could only wish the singers – and we – had benefited from a production that had extended beyond School of Franco Zeffirelli, albeit more by default than design.

Turandot, Royal Opera, 10 March 2023

Royal Opera House

Turandot – Anna Pirozzi
Emperor Altoum – Alexander Kravets
Calaf – Yonghoo Lee
Liù – Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha
Timur – Vitalij Kowalkow
Ping – Hansung Yoo
Pang – Aled Hall
Pong – Michael Gibson
Mandarin – Blaise Malaba
Two Girls – Marianne Cotterill, Tamsin Coombs

Andrei Serban (director)
Jack Furness (revival director)
Sally Jacobs (designs)
Kate Flatt (choreography)
Tatiana Novaes Coelho (choreology)
E. Mitchell Dana (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Images: Marc Brenner

Andrei Serban’s production of Turandot has certainly offered the Royal Opera its money’s worth. First seen – somewhat oddly, not at Covent Garden, but on tour to Los Angeles – in 1984, it has had no fewer than fifteen revivals on home territory, as well as touring internationally and being adapted for performances at Wembley Arena (1991 and 1992). No wonder, as Serban’s programme biography states, that ‘he is both surprised and delighted that his production … is still revived.’ This, however, is apparently to be its final outing. Assuming that to be the case, it is receiving a good send off: not before time, yet with strong performances and revival direction from Jack Furness considerably more convincing than what I saw in earlier reincarnations (2013 and 2014). 

What we see seems understandably eager to veer towards Carlo Gozzi’s fairytale. Ping, Pang, and Pong (I know…) lose the worst of their racialised appearance, clearly taking their leave instead from commedia dell’arte. Lively performances from Hansung Yoo, Aled Hall, and Michael Gibson certainly helped in that respect, perhaps even going so far as to suggest that these, alongside Puccini, might be the real orchestrators of the action, playful as well as sadistic, intriguingly beyond morality in an almost Nieztschean sense. Where that leaves the story of Turandot, Calaf, and of course Liù remains, shall we say, problematical. The ‘arias’ embedded in the score stood out awkwardly, as if remnants – and in a way they are – of bygone technique, which the composer at the height of his musical powers was unable to banish entirely, on account of theatrical and audience expectations. 

The closer the story moves to realism, the more repellent its final sadism becomes: magnificent in a way, yet also strangely unsatisfactory. The more fantastical the framework and action, the greater the artifice, the better. This seems to be well understood and indeed communicated, not least through a parade of dances that might readily have seemed theatrical for the sake of theatre. In a way they still do, yet in this context, that offers a possibility if not quite for redemption, than for something less (im)morally outrageous. The framing of the set as a theatre of sorts, or at least a public arena suggestive of one – are not the two often coterminous and coexistent? – contributes with unusual success to that desirable distancing of standpoint. Masks serve with similar, indeed still more absolute, necessity.

 

In the title role, Anna Pirozzi offered a well sung, unusually human performance, warmer than many, though also posing the question as to whether that is what we should want here. Why not, really? In posing that question it is surely performing a dramatic service of its own, difficult conflict being part of the point. Yonghoon Lee’s heroic stab at Calaf should also be commended. Only on rare occasions, when something more inwardly vulnerable was required, did it sound lacking, but that is always a difficult near-circle to square. He can ride an orchestral wave, and did. He also seemed very much at one with Furness’s reimagining of the production. Even reimagined, the production arguably does Liù no favours, but that is much to ask of any staging. Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha’s heartfelt, sincere performance was very much in the mainstream of expectations here. Timur’s strange appearance – an old man, to be sure, though it is stranger than that – likewise does the role no favours, yet when he sang, Vitalij Kowalkow was able vocally to rise far above visual limitations. 

In the pit, Antonio Pappano offered what for me turned out to be one of his best performances at Covent Garden. I have given up trying to reconcile myself to his Wagner; we clearly hear and understand that and much other music in such different ways that I am unlikely to ‘get’ it any time soon. Here, however, a Puccini darkly haunted by, even founded upon, marriage of darkly Wagnerian chromaticism to a surprisingly Wagnerian way with motivic construction – to my ears, more so than in Pappano’s Wagner – offered just the sort of musico-theatrical experience that was called for. Flexible yet goal-directed, enabling of singers yet also revelling in Puccini’s ‘symphonism’, it told us what we knew yet perhaps still wished we did not. This was a murky, malevolent tale that could not quite be wished away with a welcome does of theatrical fantasy. The oft-remarked affinities with more contemporary (to Puccini) music, not least Stravinsky and Schoenberg, were perhaps less immediately present, but viciousness both of score and broader theatrical purpose were certainly very much with us. With orchestra and chorus on excellent form, Pappano brought something both old and new to the score, greatly to his – and its – credit.

 

Farewell then, we think, to Serban. Even when revived with such intelligence as seen here, this is not a production directly to address the very difficult, probably insoluble, questions this extraordinary, flawed opera presents. Yet, given space such as was granted here – and was not, to the best of my memory, so apparent when I first saw the production – it can nonetheless permit them to play out. Taking a view seems more of a moral imperative here, on account of the sadism as much as the racism; there are many ways to do that, whether by transforming the work into something more directly political (or something else?) or by confronting its issues head on. We shall see what Serban’s successor does. This however, offers an often intriguing and absorbing last hurrah, as well, I suspect, as a hint to why new steps may prove necessary.

 

Cavalleria rusticana/Sancta Susanna, Opéra national de Paris, 3 December 2016

Opéra Bastille

Images: Julien Benhamou /OnP

Santuzza – Elina Garanča

Turiddu – Yonghoon Lee
Lucia – Elena Zaremba
Alfio – Vitaliy Bilyy
Lola – Antoinette Dennefeld

Susanna – Anna Caterina Antonacci

Klementia – Renée Morloc
Old Nun – Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo
Maid – Katharina Crespo
Knight – Jeff Esperanza

Mario Martone (director)

Sergio Tramonti (set designs)
Ursula Patzak (costumes)
Pasquale Mari (lighting)
Daniela Schiavone (assistant director, Cavalleria rusticana)
Raffaella Giordana (choreography, Sancta Susanna)


Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: José Luis Basso)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Carlo Rizzi (conductor)

Two operas: one rather better known to the operatic public, but neither to me personally. I tried (perhaps that was the problem?) with Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, yet felt rather nonplussed. There was nothing especially to ‘mind’, but the work left little impression beyond its strange pacing (dragging almost interminably, then abruptly concluding, or at least finishing). Somehow, it came across both as crude and bland. I heard dashes of undigested Wagner, devoid of context, washed up amongst mildly Verdian debris. Every so often, Mascagni seemed to aspire towards Puccini, yet barely left the starting block, falling time and time again on mere cliché, and failing to achieve anything of interest melodically, harmonically, orchestrally. Characterisation seemed minimal, the drama, such as it was, situational. As for the story, such as it was, would it not have embarrassed a 1980s television mini-series? I had been curious to discover what the fuss was all about; in a sense, I am all the more curious now, since I really did not ‘get it’. ‘Some of my best friends’, but not, alas, me…

 

If Mascagni’s opera would have seemed more suited to a ten or fifteen minutes scena, Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna left me wanting more: always a good sign. The final part of his Expressionist triptych (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen, and Das Nusch-Nuschi come first), it is much more my sort of thing, I suppose. Musically, it comes perhaps as close to ‘atonal’ Schoenberg as Hindemith would ever do: more than once, I was put in mind of Die glückliche Hand, even Bluebeard’s Castle, especially in terms of orchestral colour, but perhaps harmonically too. Subject matter – a convent riven by sexual frenzy and demonic possession – has certain points of contact with Erwartung, perhaps, and more generally with other contemporaneous musical explorations (mostly, of course by men) of female sexuality, but more obviously with Prokofiev’s later Fiery Angel. Hindemith certainly has no aspirations to the so-called athematicism of Erwartung, though, quasi-autonomous musical form already gesturing, from within its Expressionist cloak, to the Neue Sachlichkeit future.

 

What do the two works have in common? Very little, I think, although I suppose one might make some generic ‘religious’ claim. Mario Montane, perhaps mistakenly, made little or no effort to link them. An awkward five minutes or so (following curtain calls!) in between, house lights still off, did not help, audience members not unreasonably uncertain what to do (apart, that is, from some Hindemith foes who made a dash for it). It was not entirely clear to me whether the Cross seen in his Sicilian Church was supposed to be in some sense the same as that witnessed so strikingly in Sergio Tramonti’s design for the crypt or other underworld beneath the convent. At first, Montane’s Cavalleria rusticana seems highly conventional, but there is a greater degree of abstraction than one might first guess, much done with comparatively little, rescuing the work somewhat from its vulgar realism. A definite emphasis upon the menacing power of the village crowd, seated in judgement, is welcome too. (I thought of Peter Grimes.) The fun is really had to be had, though, in Sancta Susanna. The action initially takes place in a ‘window’, securely embedded, or so it seems, within a larger structure, which begins to fall to pieces – as, well, Susanna’s defences do. Nightmarish giant crucifixes, a huge insect (made up of a highly skilled movement team, well choreographed by Raffaella Giordana), and the past and present of nuns writhing on the Cross, tread with delicious ambiguity the line between sympathy and Gothic horror.



The orchestra of the Paris Opéra sounded sumptuous, with a splendid sheen but plenty of depth in the Hindemith too. Carlo Rizzi seemed perhaps more at home in Mascagni; I should not have minded a little more formal delineation in the Hindemith. Nevertheless, his exploration of orchestral colour there was greatly to be welcomed, and the climactic moments were viscerally exciting. Choral singing and blocking were well handled throughout.

 

Elina Garanča sang beautifully as Santuzza in the Mascagni, line impeccable, although there was a certain coldness to her performance that perhaps militated against the possibility of much emotional involvement. Yonghoon Lee’s excellent Turiddu was quite the peacock, also quite the mummy’s boy: just, I presume, as he should have been. Dramatic toing and froing between Anna Caterina Antonacci, every inch the queen of her stage, and Renée Morloc was gripping, reminding us that there is much to be pieced together from Hindemith’s vocal lines, not nearly so fragmentary as they might initially seem. Controlled frenzy was the order of the day, but never too controlled. All other parts were well taken. If only, though, Sancta Susanna had been presented with a more appropriate companion piece or pieces, though, whether Hindemith’s own or something more tellingly related or contrasted. Next time…