Spellbinding dancers, ‘phantoms,’ under Choreographer Kate Flatt, set the visual tone throughout and take a pivotal role in the storytelling, operating with remarkable dexterity and fluidity. Unlike in the past, the curtains were already raised prior to the commencement of the opera, with deep red, cascading silk streamers or banners framing four giant masks suspended from the ceiling against a backdrop of pagoda-styled tiered balconies onto which members of the chorus filed, some five minutes before the start. ![]() Yet, under Jack Furness’s revival, it still positively dazzles with fresh brilliance, vivid color, and impressive animation that provides for a most spectacular, overall visual feast. Indeed, deliberations still persist to this day over, even the correct pronunciation of the opera’s title itself, with many insisting it to be TuranDOT, as in microdot or ending in doh, as in, well….Homer Simpson.Īndrei Serban’s production at the Royal Opera House is now almost four decades old. Its rewrites and restructures continued right up until as recently as 2007, such was the debate about significant parts of the final act that Puccini never completed. ![]() Or, of course, it may just very well be that Maestro Puccini “laid down his pen” before he could finish creating a more cohesive tale. Toscanini, the opera’s first conductor, disliked Alfano’s work and insisted he cut about 100 bars, ending up with the version most theaters perform today, which may well lend less substance and gravitas to Princess Turandot’s character. ![]() These concerns, though, have always been assuaged with the knowledge that many others have also been plagued with such uncertainty, not least with the original work itself, for, of course, the maestro died before the completion of “ Turandot.” After his death, the composer Franco Alfano was commissioned to finish the opera Having an unequivocal passion for Puccini, this reviewer must confess to being somewhat conflicted over his final work.
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