Opera Review: The Met’s Turandot--the Beached Whale at Lincoln Center

Turandot

Composed by Giacomo Puccini (completed by Franco Alfano)

Libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni

Conducted by Marco Armiliato

Production by Franco Zeffirelli

Does the Metropolitan Opera have a future? A ridiculous question, seemingly—it’s only the world’s most prestigious house, and the place where opera careers are defined. Yet seeing the overstuffed, overwrought Turandot in a section where ¼ of the seats were empty made me wonder. The company must do better than this if it is to remain relevant to modern audiences who seek challenge and provocation at live performance, not just comfort. This production failed to do this.

Turandot is an uncompleted opera by the postromantic master Puccini. His best works (Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La Fanciulla del West, and (perhaps) La Boheme) made him an icon across the globe in the early part of the twentieth century. So when he died prior to completing his last grand opera, the opera world was left with a dilemma. Should they try to complete the last act using Puccini’s notes (but no completed score), or, as Toscanini famously did at the premiere, simply end the opera mid-act and not worry about the premature ending. Tradition now has led to using a completed version by Franco Alfano, a Puccini associate and grade B composer. He did little that was revolutionary, mostly recycling themes that Puccini had already composed. Unfortunately this deprives us of what would have likely been a big-time ending love duet with new music. The opera is decent Puccini, with typical soaring orchestra and themes, and added Asian music (well, at least an Italian version of Asian music) as he did in Madama Butterfly. Its set in a grand Chinese imperial court, never mind that the original story (and name of the heroine Turandot) were supposed to be from Persia. Close enough, I guess the creators reasoned. The original play had a strange (and intriguing) male trio called Ping, Pang, and Pong, who were Commedia del’Arte characters who oddly migrated from Venice to the Chinese court, providing satiric commentary about European politics. Strangely, these three guys remain in the opera, but are completely shorn of any political or metaphorical text, so now just slow down the momentum providing local “color”, commenting on the court’s amusing activities like beheadings. There is not much plot in this opera. The icy, beautiful princess Turandot, embittered from past tragedy, quizzes a series of suitors with three riddles. They get to marry her if they get the right answers, but are beheaded if they don’t. Our tenor hero Calaf (a favorite role for Pavarotti) gets the answers right, and the emperor rules that Turandot must marry him, as per tradition. However, for some odd reason (perhaps to extend the opera to three acts), he doesn’t just claim the prize he has been seeking throughout the opera, as he is entitled to. He gives Turandot another chance to have him beheaded by asking her to guess his real name…if she can, she is exempt from marriage and he is headless. Why he should come up with this plan to undo his own fortune is one of the silliest plot devices in all of opera. It leads to a brutal Act III, in which the lovely princess Liu is tortured and dies, refusing to reveal Calaf’s name to Turandot. Well, of course, in the end Turandot falls in love with Calaf, lets him off the hook, and says “your true name is love”. The end.

So why do this opera at all? It is flawed by its incomplete score, and has only one memorable opera (the tenor’s famed “Nessun Dorma”). The soprano role is brutal—high, loud, and only commencing in the middle of Act 2—the latest appearance of the main character I know in all of theater. The Met’s rationale for it clearly is the hyper, over-the-top production by Franco Zeffirelli from the 1980’s, yet still going strong. The elaborate version of the court throws in every possible visual stereotype of Chinoiserie you can imagine. Dragon dancers, brilliant colors, and a cast of thousands (well, hundreds) fill every possible moment and space with gaudy excess. To Zefferelli’s technical credit, he actually fills the titanic Met stage from top to bottom, leaving no square foot unused. The problem with this is that the set is so elaborate so as to require a set change for Act 2 that took over 45 minutes, following a 35 minute first act. So the modern audience, not at the opera just to be seen and drink cocktails as in 1950, is left cooling its heels, barely having been introduced to the opera before this tedious break in the drama. It reminded me of a performance I saw many years ago in the Verona arena, where each act of Il Trovatore (a two-hour opera) was punctuated with a nearly one hour intermission, ideal for the glitterati in attendance to pose, drink, and be photographed. By midnight, the opera was still not over, and I had to push my way through drunken attendees clogging the aisles in order to catch the last train back to Venice. This Turandot was not quite that bad, but still lasted for about 3 ½ hours for 2 hours of music.

Besides the inflated length and sets, the conducting and singing were good, but nothing special. The tenor was certainly not Pavarotti vocally, and did not add much dramatically. The renowned soprano Christine Goerke was a strong Turandot, but perhaps took the “ice princess” thing a bit too literally, projecting almost no personality dramatically. The massive crowd of extras moved about as if they had done this one too many times, and perhaps many of them have. I was mostly bored. If this is what opera means to the Met, the medium will die. While I am not always enamored of the latest European directors’ radical takes on operas (see my reviews of the 2019 Bayreuth festival, e.g.), at least they are trying something, even if they fail. If companies do not try to create some sort of dramatic tension, then live opera is nothing more than a juke box with pictures, allowing a conservative audience to return time after time for “their” Tosca or La Boheme. I doubt that younger generations will respond to this approach, since they seem resistant to repeating anything, reared on web surfing and Instagram. Given the technical advances in movies since the 1980s, its not surprising that the dazzle has worn off, a little like seeing Ben Hur or The Greatest Story Ever Told. The Met has no chance to fill its enormous, world’s largest house (over 3800 seats) unless it risks offending its old guard subscribers and shakes things up. At this point, as much as I love opera, I will rarely attend the Met unless the company features some risky or exceptional take on opera, or a new opera. It now seems like an ornate, dying whale, washed ashore in Lincoln Center.