Turandot, Liudmyla Monastyrska; Calaf, Yonghoon Lee; Liu, Ermonela Jaho; Timur, Ferruccio Furlanetto; conductor, Marco Armiliato; director, Franco Zeffirelli
Oh dear…… Turandot is a bit of a problem really in any performance but particularly in this – presumably fairly ancient – Zeffirelli one. Orientalist, sexist (at least as far as Liu is concerned, and to some extent Turandot as well), racist, patronising (even for its time Turandot as a work must have seemed backward looking in terms of story and attitudes), badly acted, over-busy, stuffed full with sets, too many people on stage, ridiculous costumes….it’s the kind of thing that gives opera a bad name and it’s not a comfortable view. The Zeffirelli production is frankly monstrous – every corner of the stage is filled with ‘business’ and over-large sets, with constant unnecessary movement and dancing. But, conversely, the music is often marvellous – wonderful harmonies which move beyond Wagner to Mahler and Debussy, maybe Stravinsky, too, despite the silly Chinoiserie of some of the melodies at times. The fact that Puccini did not live to complete the opera doesn’t help – the final duet seems weak both dramatically and musically in the Alfano completion. For the most part, I just shut my eyes and wallowed in the Met orchestra on top form. I came across a nice quote from the LA Times that I think makes a reasonable point about the music – “What makes “Turandot” a true Chinese opera is not that it sounds Chinese but it follows the Tao. The orchestra is like the sky above and the ocean below, hurling clouds and surging waves, ever changing, ear-catching in colours and surprising in harmonies that don’t predictably resolve, keeping you off guard just often enough. This is the environment, and as striking as the demands of the singers, the orchestra is the environment with which they must become one.” Turandot is one of those works that positively screams for regietheater, but we were a million miles away from it here.
The Zeffirelli production tries to deal with the evident non-Chinese faces of most of the performers on stage by getting quite a lot of them to wear masks – however inevitably that doesn’t apply to the principals, and so the production looks inescapably Western focused.
As indicated above, for the most part, the acting was poor and there was little chemistry between the performers – Turandot dealt in semaphore signals, Calaf didn’t even bother with those but just stood still, ocasionally bending his legs, to deliver , Timur and the Emperor just have to be static anyway. The one person who really made an effort (and what an effort) was Ermonela Jaho, who was very convincing and passionate as Liu.
The singing – again with one exception – was good but not more than that. Liudmyla Monastyrska produced some lovely legato singing at times, and she banged out the high notes appropriately but she remained a cypher – which up to a point is what she is, so acceptable, but there was no change in the final act. There was sometimes quite a wide vibrato to her voice which occasionally was wearing. There’s one exception to these comments – Lyudmilla Monastyrska is Ukrainian (and in fact replaced the now boycotted Anna Netrebko in this run of performances) and the aria ‘In Questa Reggia’’s lines are extraordinarily appropriate to Ukraine’s situation at present, menaced by an aggressive enemy. She said in an interview that she totally identified with the state of her country in singing that aria, and this came across very movingly. Yonghoon Lee was a good proponent of can belto – reliable, always delivering on the high notes, but with little sensitivity or lightness of touch. Ermonela Jaho was in a completely different league to these two – floating some beautiful high notes, wonderfully varied in tone, her’s was a masterclass in how to do opera well on stage. Although, as I said above, I enjoyed wallowing in the music I did think that Marco Amiliato’s conducting didn’t produce the sort of visceral effects good Puccini conducting – I still remember the glorious sounds Zubin Mehta conjured up in the 1979 ROHCG production of La Fanciulla del West – can produce, and I thought the first act dragged.
On the whole, I felt I should have done something else that evening……….
John's musical journey 