I have to be honest here – I really dislike Puccini’s Turandot. I once told a friend “I only go to the theatre to see Puccini if a ray of light from the sky appears before my eyes and a voice tells me I have to”. But that’s not entirely true, because I did see Turandot a couple of times without God telling me to do it and I have never enjoyed the experience. Curiously, the first opera I have ever seen in my life was… Turandot and, hey, I’m still here.
So the question is – why have I took the train to Geneva for Turandot? 1 – I haven’t been in an opera house in a while, 2 – I like going to the opera in Geneva, 3 – it was supposed to be a production with dazzling use of technology etc.
I must have very little knowledge of lighting technology, for I wouldn’t be able to tell that I was witnessing anything groundbreaking there, although I could see that they were pulling all the stops in what regards light design and videos. It only looked like something the Cirque du Soleil might do better (I have no actual idea, for I prefer Turandot to the Cirque du Soleil). Director Daniel Kramer explains he intended to show this as a futuristic dystopia à la 1984. The theatre’s website used the slogan “When Puccini meets the Hunger Games”. Yes, there are moments when it looks like a reality TV show, and yet this is only hinted at in a very incoherent way. In the end, it looks just like any other staging of Turandot – but there’s a big “but” here. Mr. Kramer is collaborating in this staging with the Japanese artist collective teamLab – and one tends to think of scrumptious design when one thinks of Japan. But Japan has its own version of tawdry – and this is one very evident example. OK, Turandot comes as the illustration in the dictionary’s definition of kitsch. But there are all kinds of kitsch – and this here goes to the “gruesome” end of the scale. It was ugly, awkward, pretentious and alarmingly crude. Mr. Kramer’s convolute stage direction (and his obsession with graphic description of castration and phallic visual gags) couldn’t help making it even worse, I don’t mean anyone was offended by anything – the feeling was rather Fremdscham.
The musical side of the performance had the immediate advantage of Luciano Berio’s ending. Although there is very little love between me and Turandot, there is a abhorrence in my relationship with the Alfano ending. Conductor Antonino Fogliani evidently wants us to know every facet of Puccini’s tutti-frutti – and he did it with a sure hand, the orchestra played well, all colors and stylistic influences were there. For someone who does not like the score, this makes it even kitschier. But that’s not Mr. Fogliani’s fault, who was an umile ancello del genio creatore. Someone like me would rather go for the Karajan “let’s pretend it’s Richard Strauss”-approach. But that’s my fault, of course.
In terms of singing, I can’t say there was a lot of joie de chant here. It is not unusual to find singers struggling in Turandot, but this afternoon seemed to be about how difficult everything was. Ingela Brimberg was the Grand Théâtre’s Elektra a couple of months ago. In that role, the lack of edge and the felt-like middle registers brought about an added dimension to the role; she sounded vulnerable in it. Here, on the other hand, it’s all about edge – a cutting edge. And Puccini is expecting the soprano to deliver the goods both in the extreme top and low notes. And that was a bit beyond was Ms. Brimberg has to offer. In order to cope with the unrealistic demands, she has to distort the tone amd was often unclear with the text. In her favor, one can say she could scale down and almost float her tone when that was possible.
It is clear that Francesca Dotto knows exactly what has to be done in the role of Liù – and she mostly did it with a voice helplessly light for the role. As it was, she sounded a bit mealy, whiny and really tremulous.
There is no doubt about the quality of Teodor Ilincai’s voice – it is big and has a naturally pleasant color. And he definitely has stamina. Yet the technique is puzzling. One feels that the higher overtones are never there – all vowels are a bit too dark, he never goes beyond a French “o” and a French “é”, the passaggio is a bit all over the place and intonation goes a bit dubious there. High notes are right in pitch yet bottled up and muscular rather than projecting. I wondered how far he could go this way – and he went rather far, just enough to sing Nessus dorma. After that it was 50 shades of grey.
I HEAR VOICES 
Wonder how many others feel the same way you and I do about Turandot. Believe me, I have tried but failed to garner anything positive from it. The entire work takes place in the public square. The one-off characterizations are as shallow and superficial as buskers on a subway ride. But worst is the low quality of the pseudo-fascistic orchestration in the dramatic “climaxes”. Hollywood fantasy-ecstacy before Hollywood? That’s what seems to turn on the people I have talked to who like the work – and there seem to be many of them judging from the proliferation of Hollywood film music concerts scheduled in European venues nowadays.
– Thought about you a few weeks ago. Went to Opernhaus Zürich to see Bellini’s Il Pirata. I had seen it only once before (many years ago in a heavily cut mediocre performance) so I wanted to give it a second try. Conductor Iván López-Reynoso structured the performance as a cohesive work, giving it merit I was not aware of before. Very impressed.
Hello, Jerold! So I’m not alone here about Turandot…
I actually went to the theatre to see I Pirata, but I left at the intermission. I wasn’t feeling very well and wasn’t enjoying the singing at all, so I left at the intermission and did not write about it. Maybe if I wasn’t ill that day I could have found something positive. I vaguely remember a good impression of the overture but it was really a bad day – and I didn’t feel like coming back. It was a pity for it’s a work I only know from recordings.
The singers, with the exception of Konstantin Shushakov as Ernesto and the excellent supporting cast of male singers, were not “on” the night I went. Andrew Owens, the replacement for Javier Camerena as Gualtiero, labored over much of his music and only seemed comfortable at the curtain calls after it was all over. Irina Lungu as Imogene sang very well; her voice is ample & flexible but the timbre is tight & monochromatic lacking overtones. Some say she reminds them of Callas, but Callas had reverberating overtones (almost a hum) and flashes of brightness & color, something Lungu didn’t demonstrate the night I went. The “veteran” Irene Friedli who sang Imogene’s handmaiden Adele is an accomplished character actress but she unfortunately she had no voice left. Still, it was the work itself that impressed me thanks to the conductor and the 1st class Zürich Philharmonia – it all came together as a single structure in the second act, although the diva nonsense in the finale got a bit tiresome.
– Also I was not in the best mood, either. My decades-old memories of the charming small-big city of Zürich were immediately destroyed upon arrival. The enlarged train station was as dismal, dirty & crowded as Hamburg & Frankfurt Hbf. I remember a charming old-fashioned trattoria style restaurant with flowers on the tables in front of the train station. The Theaterplatz in front of the opernhaus is now an outdoor venue with lawn chairs strewn around – as Il Pirata went on inside, people gathered on the plaza to watch a video of Der fliegende Holländer on a big projection screen. Would like to go back to see Siegfried next season but if I do I’d rather fly in and take the train direct non-stop from the airport to Bahnhof Stadelhofen (another commercial nightmare but at least smaller than Zürich Hbf) and directly back to the airport – this way I can avoid most of the city entirely. Brussels, as old and rundown as it is, has MUCH more charm than Zürich and it is still a pleasure to stay there.
Although the soprano manages the coloratura, I have found her there and elsewhere unsuited to belcanto – one cannot get a word, the voice is monochrome and not particularly pleasant. It is almost offensive to the memory of Edita Gruberová, who used to own the repertoire in Zurich, that some apter wasn’t found to sing Bellini.
Well, Zurich seemed to have decided to look cool – and as we know, you can’t fake coolness. So it’s been a trade-off from hell – it’s sad to leave the opera house and find horrible music outside beside other substances pervading the atmosphere… But, as the Marschallin (and François Villon before her) says – Such dir den Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr….
Im such dir den Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr – sometimes it has not quite disappeared – thrice during my travels this June I could sense it’s presence again:
1. Meyerbeer Les Huguenots de Munt Brussels 15 June.
2. Montemezzi L’amore dei tre Theater Lübeck 12 June.
3. Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Hello, Jerold! I am glad you found three items that made you remember the good old times. A friend of mine saw the Meistersinger in Berlin and had an overall positive impression of it too.
The audio of the 2 July Meistersinger performance from Deutsche Oper Berlin will be broadcast live starting at 16:00 CET Saturday on https://www.rbb-online.de/rbbkultur/