Turandot review: Puccini's last opera lends itself to spectacular effects

4 / 5 stars
Puccini’s Turandot

ANDREI Serban’s Oriental staging of Turandot is now in its 16th revival and still packing in the audiences.

Opera scenePH

Puccini’s final opera, unfinished at the time of his death, lends itself to spectacular effects

Puccini’s final opera, unfinished at the time of his death, lends itself to spectacular effects. Sally Jacobs’s lacquer red and gilded designs are a crossover between grand opera and pantomime. 

Masked dancers with red-tipped scimitars, carved juggernauts and the Emperor of China’s descent from above on a golden throne add to the eye-dazzling show.

The splendour doesn’t disguise the fact that the opera is based on a very dark fairy tale indeed: the Emperor’s daughter, avenging her murdered ancestress, condemns to death any suitor failing to answer three riddles. 

At the start we see a Persian prince drifting like a somnambulist towards his execution. 

Calaf, the Unknown Prince, arrives in Peking and falls in love with Turandot at first sight. When he answers the three riddles correctly, he gives the Princess a sporting chance by allowing her to claim his head if she can guess his name. Cue for opera’s most famous tenor aria Nessun Dorma (None Shall Sleep). 

Calaf’s offer inevitably leads to the capture of his faithful maid servant Liu. Liu refuses to reveal her master’s name, and commits suicide when she is tortured. Her sacrifice through love finally melts the heart of the ice princess. The sight of Liu’s body being borne past on a funeral byre while Calaf and Turandot get into a passionate clinch is actually rather sickening.

But Puccini had a macabre side, and at the time of composing the opera in 1924 was disillusioned with life and seriously ill. The final scene was completed after his death by Franco Alfano.

Opera scenePH

Sally Jacobs’s lacquer red and gilded designs are a crossover between grand opera and pantomime

Whatever lack of empathy one may feel for the psychopath princess and her self-obsessed suitor, Puccini provided them with the grand arias that require big-voiced singers. 

With American soprano Christine Goerke in the title role and Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko as Calaf, Covent Garden has two hard hitters who send the notes winging over the tumultuous brass of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera under conductor Dan Ettinger.

Goerke’s revenge aria In Questa Reggia is delivered with thrilling intensity. 

Russian soprano Hibla Gerzmava is a sweet-toned Liu, and stole the greatest applause at the curtain calls, which may have a little to do with the character’s appeal for the audience. 

Puccini’s Turandot Royal Opera Royal Opera House, London WC2 (Tickets: 020 7240 1200/roh.org.uk; £9-£175)

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