By Peter McCallum
TURANDOT
Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, Mrs Macquaries Point, March 24. Until April 24
Dragana Radakovic (Turandot) and Riccardo Massi (Calaf) in Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. Credit: Prudence Upton
★★★★
The earliest surviving account of music at Farm Cove is by Lieutenant-Governor David Collins, who described a 1795 tooth-removal ceremony there by the Gadigal and Cammeraygal people in Volume 1 of his Account of the English Colony in New South Wales.
With the fourth Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, modern Sydney is developing its own rituals around this beautiful place, with Utzon's Opera House looking on serenely across the water like a forsaken temple.
Spectacle and fireworks, of course, are indispensable, the last mentioned posing a particular challenge in Puccini's Turandot because of its absence of celebratory moments until, perhaps, the last scene.
In the end, the popularity of Nessun Dorma provided the pretext, adding new meaning to its text "none shall sleep".
Stage director and choreographer Chen Shi-Zheng fills the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the space adroitly, with the billowing sleeves of dancers at ground level, while other performers literally scale the heights with the assistance of cranes and towers.
Dan Potra's set is focused around two dominant elements: a fire-breathing dragon, whose winding body doubles as a screen for Leigh Sachwitz's projections and as a mezzanine performance stage; and the central, obelisk-like structure from which soprano Dragana Radakovic as Turandot made her dramatic entrance and vertiginous descent.
Radakovic's singing was steely, true and incisive, creating a majestic persona of imperious haughtiness.
In the work's unpersuasive final scene – which Puccini never finished and would have done more convincingly if he had – where Turandot is suddenly transformed from ice princess to human, Radakovic sang with passionate intensity.
Her voice was not always ideally served by the amplification, which sometimes over-emphasised edge at the expense of warmth.
By contrast, the rich colour of tenor Riccardo Massi's voice as Calaf came through with splendid depth and his Nessun Dorma was powerful without losing lyricism and melodic shape.
Hyeseoung Kwon sang the role of Liu, the sacrificial slave girl, with haunting simplicity and beautiful expressive pathos. Her tragic scene in the final act was the most dramatically affecting moment of the night.
John Longmuir, Benjamin Rasheed and Luke Gabbedy created the courtly cynicism of Pong, Pang and Ping with lively, oleaginous wit.
As the emperor, David Lewis was primarily required to sit on a sofa and sing while suspended from a great height, which he did very well.
Being only a Mandarin, Gennadi Dubinsky had to stand while doing the same thing, but seemed blissfully immune to vertigo. Conal Coad raged with tender solicitousness as the ageing Timur.
Conductor Brian Castles-Onion is a deft and experienced musical co-ordinator in this logistically challenging setting, handling Puccini's masterly dramatic pacing in the opening act with finely tuned instinct.
While the chorus blended with thrilling cohesiveness, the orchestral sound was somewhat unevenly amplified, with the bass and some brass instruments sometimes losing focus.
After a soggy fortnight, the weather gods provided a perfect night of autumnal balminess for this now-established ritual to swirl and blaze.