Review: Turandot"Turandot: Opera Reigns"The Times of Trenton (Anita Donovan) What better way is there to whet the appetite of opera-goers for a triple-threat summer season of Mozart, Gounod and Gilbert & Sullivan than to present a midwinter concert version of the spectacular Turandot, Puccini’s last opera? Such was the effect of New Jersey Opera Theater’s semi-staged concert at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, with another performance to follow Sunday at New Brunswick’s State Theater. Turandot – unlike the operas Puccini is most famous for, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, and La Boheme – is not in the verismo, or realistic, style with its appealing, star-crossed lovers and cruel turns of fate. Based on a Persian legend, Turandot is more fairly tale, with outsized emotions and illogical twists of plot and character. Puccini and librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni styled both a heroine and hero of superb self-absorption and egotism: Ms. Turandot fancies herself untouchable, “the daughter of Heaven,” and her insistent suitor Calaf pursues his romantic fulfillment completely oblivious to the pain and loss it cases others, including his father. Princess Turandot has vowed never to marry, in vengeance for a wrong done to an ancient ancestor. To ward off suitors, she demands they answer three riddles. If they get the right answers, she will wed. If the suitors fail, they are summarily beheaded. Surprisingly, according to a count offered by Turandot’s three ministers of executions, Ping, Pang and Pong, more than 22 suitors have already parted with their heads. Calaf, the peregrinating son of the deposed monarch Timur, comes on the scene just as the handsome Prince of Persia is dispatched, but with barely a second thought, Calaf is banging the gong and declaring himself the next suitor. Rejecting good advice from his father, his faithful slave Liu and even the Princess’s ministers, Calaf – under the cloak of anonymity – insists on trying the riddles. When he succeeds, a livid Turandot reneges and puts the entire city under threat of death if no one can discover the name of the upstart by morning. Once an audience gets past the “What was Puccini thinking?” stage, Turandot is a lot of fun, full of sublime musical moments and not a little satirical humor. At least some of the characters in the opera are well aware of their absurd situation. Emperor Altoum of China rues the day he let his daughter start riddling her hapless suitors, while Ping, Pang and Pong are utterly demoralized by the depths to which they have sunk. They even try to bribe Calaf from his quest by offering money and the company of beautiful concubines. Baritone Anton Belov and tenors Jonathan Green and Joel Sorensen share a characteristically dreamy Puccini trio as they yearn for their off-palace homesteads. Calaf stands pat and eventually wins the fair lady, who at last is transformed by love. The final scene of Turandot was completed by Puccini’s former student Franco Alfano, under the diligent eye of conductor Arturo Toscanini. While the ending resolves the boy-girl standoff in what appears to be a happy ending, it is somewhat mechanical and nowhere near as touching as the tragic finales of Puccini’s other works, unless one considers the possible danger Calaf faces in actually marrying the merciless Turandot. As the dueling Calaf and Turandot, Metropolitan Opera tenor Allan Glassman delivers a virile “Nessun Dorma” and Met soprano Sharon Sweet explains her wedding jitters with “In questa reggia.” New York City Opera’s Barbara Shirvis makes an affecting Liu, with bass Raymond Aceto as the blind Timur. As in last year’s semi-staging of Verdi’s Falstaff, the concert version features the entire orchestra and chorus on stage, with a minimum of scenic effects and props, but a full panoply of dazzling costumes, designed and fabricated by Patricia Hibbert. With the Westfield Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Steven Mosteller and the celebrated Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia supplying the chorus, the onstage sound is rich and precise, but never overbearing, allowing the soloists to sing effortlessly and project emotion and wit as well as melody. Return to the Reviews and Articles Archive.
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