Turandot

On Saturday, the 27th, Paul and I attended the German Staatsoper premiere of Turandot, under the baton of Kent Nagano, a much sought-after ticket in the city that night. In fact, in order for me to be able to accompany Paul to this performance, it was necessary for him to pull some strings by calling upon Kent to intercede with the publicity lady through whom he was getting the ticket, since her initial response to Paul's request was that she could only supply his press-pass and no other tickets. In the end through Kent's intervention, I was able to purchase a ticket at the outrageous price of 100 Euros, about $120.00. Despite the cost to me, and to those others who were not fortunate enough to be officially covering the event as Paul was, I was delighted for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend a premiere in this world famous hall.

It is easy enough to beg, borrow or steal a CD to hear a performance of this opera, the music to which is stirring and beautiful, but to only hear the opera is to experience it only partially. For those of you like me who may not be familiar with opera, it is a combination of all kinds of artistic performances. There is the symphonic performance of the music by the orchestra that accompanies the vocal performances of the characters. Those characters are, of course, acting out a story, the libretto, so their acting is another level of performance art involved in putting on the opera. Inevitably the actions of the characters also involve some level of ballet as well. Finally, because this is a stage production, after all, there is the staging of the story, the sets and costumes and movements of the characters around the stage, which is another stratum of the complexity of the total performance. It is this last component that drew the most attention in last night's performance, so much so in fact, that its controversial nature no doubt detracted from the overall performance rather than serving to enhance it, as I'm sure God intended when She first conceived the art form.

And the staging was met with mixed reactions during the curtain calls that the cast and crew took after the performance. Only the person responsible for the staging, Doris Doerrie, received a mixture of applause AND boos as she came out for her curtain call. The reason is best summed up, in my opinion, as the anachronistic nature of the staging. The opera as you would learn if you bothered to look it up (try here) is set in China, and the main character for which the story is named, Turandot, is the ravishingly beautiful princess for whom suitors risk death in order to win her hand in matrimony. The Emperor, her father, has set forth three riddles that potential suitors must answer before being deemed worthy of her hand in marriage. The problem arises when they are NOT successful, since in that case they are beheaded. In fact the story opens as the Prince of Persia is awaiting death because he failed in the task. Now, if you think about it, this story is hardly believeable ... UNLESS you think of it as having occurred way, way back in history, at a time when the hand of a princess wasn't nearly as devalued as it would be today. Potential riches and life-long exalted estate in the empire MIGHT, but only might, temp some poor devil to seek that prize at the risk of losing his head. Today such behavior for the chance at marriage, the longevity of which is dubious at best, would be unthinkable. So, for this conceit to be believeable, it requires that the setting be at some much earlier time in history. Yet, that was not the case with last night's production.

With all that as the background, you might begin to understand whence came the boos. The staging of last night's performance was set in contemporary times, and the various evidences of that were a 30-40 foot tall cell phone on which the image of the Ice Princess (Turandot) appeared and on which the eventually-successful suitor, Calaf, "typed in" the answers to the riddles to win her hand. She lived, I kid you not, in the belly of a giant teddy bear, the symbolism of which never did become apparent. Ping, Pang, and Pong, the ministers of the Empire, took off for a picnic on mopeds with their "honeys" and proceeded to "get it on," as it were, with them (in simulation of course) in a meadow on mats that the young ladies had brought with them. The relevance of this particular staging was not immediately or even subsequently apparent. The Emperor appeared in a brown plastic suit and green tie, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out who he was supposed to be because he was dressed more like a used car salesman than like an Emperor. The fact that the staging of this performance drew so much attention to itself, and even in my description of the performance occupies so much space, is evidence I think of the fact that it was a distraction rather than an enhancement to the performance.

Fortunately, despite the distractions of the staging, the music and the other aspects of the performance were superb. After the show we had an invitation to a reception buffet following the performance at which we made a perfunctory visit before skipping out and heading home about midnight. All things considered, I was quite impressed with my first premiere.
- posted by Perry @ 7:42 PM