Article: Turandot"The Immediacy and Character of Semi-Staged Opera"U.S.1 (Elaine Strauss) Producing a fully-staged opera is complicated and expensive. Singers; instrumentalists; dancers; as well as designers and builders of scenery, lighting, and costumes must be coordinated and paid for. Of course, it is possible to take a shortcut to the essential feature of opera, namely the music, by omitting the staging. Eve Queler with her Opera Orchestra of New York has been a leader in doing exactly that, presenting big voices in little-known works, to the delight of devoted opera fans. However, her enterprise faces fiscal problems because many young opera-goers are turned off by concert-operas’ lack of visual and dramatic elements. There is a middle way, semi-staged opera, which New Jersey Opera Theater (NJOT) follows in two presentations of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot. Performances take place Sunday, March 4 at McCarter Theater, and Sunday March 11, in New Brunswick’s State Theater. The cast includes Sharon Sweet (Turandot), Allan Glassman (Calaf), Barbara Shirvis (Liu), and Raymond Aceto (Timur). Steven Mosteller conducts. Ira Siff directs. Although the State Theater, with space for 1,800, is almost twice the size of McCarter, which seats 1,000, the performing area is about the same at both theaters. In July NJOT will present fully-staged productions of Mozart’s Magic Flute, Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet in McCarter’s Berlind Theater. In NJOT’s Turandot the principals are in costume, while the chorus is in concert-dress. Chorus and orchestra appear on stage behind the principals. A shell behind orchestra and chorus will be in place at the State. The comic characters, Ping, Pang, and Pong, use props. Stage director for Turandot Ira Siff sees both pros and cons for semi-staged opera. Siff has directed semi-staged operas for Queler’s Opera Orchestra, and for New York State’s Caramoor festival. “Fully-staged opera has more opportunities for scenic splendor,” he says in a telephone interview from his Manhattan home. “However, with semi-staged opera, you can bring out vivid individual characterizations which you can’t do when there are 800 people on stage. “Because Turandot is a spectacle and a fairy tale, doing a semi-staged version of it is tricky,” Siff says. “There’s not that much room for characterization.” Still, he finds room for individual portrayals in the work. The opera focuses on the beautiful Princess Turandot, who has afreed to marry the suitor who solves three riddles. Suitors who fail are beheaded. After the unknown Calaf solves the riddles, Turandot reneges on her promise of marriage. Calaf announces that if anyone learns his name, he will give up his right to Turandot’s hand in marriage, and will allow himself to be killed. Liu, a slave girl in service to Calaf’s father, Timur, is in love with Calaf; she announces that she alone knows the name of the successful suitor. When she refuses to reveal the name, Liu is condemned to execution. She commits suicide as she is being led away. Calaf admonishes Turandot for her cruelty, fervently kisses her, and reveals his identity. He wins Turandot by his sincerity, and she announces that his name is “Love.” Comic relief in the opera comes from three ministers of the court: Ping, Grand Chancellor or China; Pang, supreme lord of provisions; and Pong, supreme lord of the imperial kitchen. “Liu and Timur are the only flesh and blood human beings in the opera,” Siff says. “Even though Turandot becomes three-dimensional at the end, the focal point of human interest has to be bigger than characterization, since the human angle is somewhat absent.” For characterizing Turandot, Siff turns to her ambivalence about Calaf. She is simultaneously drawn to him, and afraid of him. “My job is to bring out the elements of fear and attraction in the character of Turandot,” Siff says. I have to invest her entrance on stage with fear stemming from the attraction that causes her to be more freaked out about Calaf than about any of the other suitors. “She explains this in Act Three in an aria that’s usually omitted,” Siff says, noting that the aria is left out because it was not written by Puccini, who died before completing the opera. Franco Alfano, working from Puccini’s sketches, finished the score. Aside from giving homage to Puccini, omitting the aria is wise on practical grounds, Siff says. “It helps with the stamina needed for the final melting duet between Calaf and Turandot, which is extremely demanding. However, even without the Act Three aria, it is possible to show that Turandot is afraid of Calaf. Veteran portrayer of Turandot, Princeton soprano Sharon Sweet concurs with Siff about the role. Sweet has played Turandot at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, in London, Paris, Florence, Beijing, and on film. “We agree completely on who Turandot is and on her physical portrayal.” Siff says. “She’s on the throne, not moving much. We work though voice, facial expressions, and body language. You can stress these in a semi-staged version, so semi-staging is an advantage. The other characters will move a lot, as if their roles were fully staged. The way Sharon moves would fly also in a fully staged version.”… Return to the Reviews and Articles Archive.
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