Puccini's "Turandot"

Turandot is a self-centred bitch. Even though she's a beautiful princess, she is one obnoxious, selfish woman.

There I meant the character of Turandot. Not the opera itself. Puccini's opera is quite wonderful actually. The orchestration is rather adventurous (and sounds a little bit more Wagner than Puccini), compared to other Puccini classics such as La Boheme and Madama Butterfly, but still very grand and magnificent.

(Source: The Metropolitan Opera, New York)

Franco Zeffirelli's production never disappoints. The set is eye-poppingly amazing, with the lavish gold oriental designs.

The story itself is quite dramatic and moving (I especially like the scene where Calaf solves the riddles), although I must say I don't like the character of Turandot. She chops peoples' heads for fun, and refuses to admit her defeat after Calaf solved all of her three riddles. And speaking of Calaf, he is one love-struck schmuck who is stupid enough to love Turandot, even after poor Liu stabs herself because she's been hiding her love and wanted to save his life. Liu the slave-girl reminds me of Les Miserables' Eponine, who is also secretly in love (with Marius - on that note I must mention that tenor Marcello Giordani does bear a resemblance to Michael Ball) and dies in the arms of the guy.

Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya sings the role of this poor girl. I've seen her performing live once at the Royal Opera House, playing Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. Maybe because she's Russian, I think she's more competent at singing the role of Tatyana than of Liu (even though in the interview during intermission she states that she prefers Italian opera over Russian simply because of the pronunciation of the vowels is much harder in her mother tongue). Or maybe it's simply because I prefer the character of Tatyana...Poplavskaya did do a great job in Eugene Onegin's "Letter scene", vocally and dramatically. Whereas in Turandot, her pianissimo and higher notes were not so impressive.

Tenor Marcello Giordani was the love-struck Calaf. His "Nessum Dorma" was pretty good, and received some pre-matured "Bravo!"s and applause (even before the orchestra finished their part), but his lower notes weren't as mind-blowing as his higher notes (the finish was quite amazing though). About his character, I still don't understand how he can "love" someone like Turandot. She's one evil woman!

By the way I watched the broadcast at Namba Parks Cinema. The opera was obviously sung in Italian, and it was broadcast with Japanese subtitles. I stupidly forgot to print out the synopsis/cast sheet before I left, and ended up having to resolve to Wikipedia during intermission.

The synopsis to Puccini's Turandot is available as a PDF document here.


P.S. It's 0148 in the middle of the night and I'm still up...which is quite unusual of me since coming to Japan. Ugh really can't be bothered to do anything right now, not even to leave my chair for one second to put my chorus hoodie on. I am feeling quite tired though, 'cause didn't sleep well last night after being woken up at 0418 by a minor earthquake (3.6 on the Richter scale), but still, I'm not that inclined to climb into bed yet.