{"id":3609,"date":"2019-01-10T21:54:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T20:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=3609"},"modified":"2019-01-10T22:10:17","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T21:10:17","slug":"theatre-like-ice-that-gives-you-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=3609","title":{"rendered":"Theatre like Ice That Gives You Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything began to deteriorate in 1906, with the passing of Giuseppe Giacosa \u2013 the co-creator (together with Luigi Illica) of Puccini\u2019s greatest operatic successes: La Boh\u00e8me, Tosca <\/em>and Madama Butterfly.<\/em> Two years later, a scandal broke out: Elvira Puccini accused her husband of a romance with their youthful servant girl, Doria Manfredi. It seemed that she had strong arguments in hand. The composer had already previously earned himself a reputation as an incorrigible ladies\u2019 man, and Doria completely idolised him. When Elvira started a rumour that she had caught the two in flagranti<\/em>, the girl committed suicide. The autopsy showed that Doria had died a virgin. The servant\u2019s family brought a lawsuit, Elvira was found guilty, Puccini negotiated with the lawyers for the conviction to be set aside, and paid Manfredi a princely sum in damages. The tragedy of Doria tormented him to his life\u2019s end. The composer, who had always made it his goal for the audience to cry at performances of his operas, had himself fallen victim to an intrigue that deceptively resembled Illica and Giacosa\u2019s earlier libretti. And he was horrified to realise that the world, on the brink of the Great War, had occupied itself with other matters. \u2018It is very difficult to write an opera now,\u2019 he complained in a letter to Illica. The American success of La Fanciulla del West<\/em>, created in collaboration with other librettists, turned out not to be reproducible in Europe. La Rondine <\/em>\u2013 after its world premi\u00e8re in 1917 \u2013 quickly fell into oblivion. Subsequent ideas for pieces based on motifs from works by Shakespeare, Balzac, Dickens, Kipling and Tolstoy landed in the circular file.<\/p>\n

Finally, Puccini decided to set forth into the unknown. In 1919, he invited Italian journalist, theatrical critic and playwright Renato Simoni \u2013 who was friendly with Giuseppe Adami, the librettist for La Rondine <\/em>and Il Tabarro<\/em>, written a year later \u2013 to Torre del Lago. Simoni proposed that Puccini take a journey into the land of myth. \u2018And Gozzi? What if we just returned to the \u0153uvre<\/em> of Gozzi?\u2019 The composer agreed to the writer\u2019s suggestion. He asked a certain lady who had seen a famous production by Max Reinhardt at Berlin\u2019s Deutsches Theater back before the war to send him photos from that show. He decided the matter was worth his interest \u2013 on the condition that the intrigue be simplified and shown through the prism of the contemporary audience\u2019s sensibilities: \u2018Simoni\u2019s, Adami\u2019s and mine\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Andrea Mastroni <\/span>(<\/span>Timur), Gregory Kunde\u00a0<\/span>(Calaf<\/span>), and Yolanda Auyanet (Li\u00f9) – with Joan Mart\u00edn Royo\u00a0(Ping), \u00a0Vicen\u00e7 Esteve\u00a0(Pang), and Juan Antonio Sanabria (Pong). Photo: Javier del Real<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The libretto of Turandot<\/em> diverges far from its prototype. It even conflicts with Schiller\u2019s Romantic, moralizing adaptation produced in Weimar by Goethe in 1802. One could risk the assertion that Puccini\u2019s last opera is an homage to poor Doria, who took on the form of Turandot<\/em>\u2019s Li\u00f9 \u2013 unhappily in love with Calaf and faithful unto death \u2013 who brings to mind associations with the female leads in the composer\u2019s earlier works: the crueler the fate prepared for them together with the librettists, the more Puccini pitied them. Both the soulless princess and her unyielding admirer \u2013 unlike Li\u00f9 \u2013 impress the viewer as beings not of this world, to whom only the final \u2018transfiguration\u2019 can impart more human characteristics. And that was precisely Puccini\u2019s downfall. He struggled with the protagonists\u2019 final duet for months, unaware that his own days had been numbered by throat cancer. He agreed only to the fourth version of the last scene, sent by Adami in October 1924, after four years of work on the piece as a whole. Next to a barely-sketched melody from Turandot\u2019s part, he made an intriguing note: \u2018poi Tristano\u2019 \u2013 \u2018then Tristan\u2019. Researchers are wracking their brains to this day, wondering what he had in mind. To finish the opera with an allusion to Wagner\u2019s masterpiece? Or perhaps \u2013 more probably \u2013 to throw down the gauntlet before Wagner, to describe the princess\u2019 transfiguration by love in a completely different sonic language, to blaze completely new trails for Italian opera, which over the past century had become ossified? We shall never find out. At the world premi\u00e8re, Toscanini lay down his baton after Li\u00f9\u2019s death scene.<\/p>\n

Turandot <\/em>is one of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century\u2019s unfinished masterpieces. A mysterious work \u2013 on the one hand, literally boiling with melodic imagination, as if Puccini, sensing his impending death, was trying to fit in material for several operas which would no longer have the chance to be written; and on the second, surprisingly innovative, combining references to Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg and the French Impressionists with allusions to the form\u2019s tradition filtered through a fin-de-si\u00e8cle<\/em> sensibility; and on the third, a brilliant failure, a musical expression of powerlessness in conflict with a subject as tempting as it was risky for an artist lost in the land of fairy tales. And like most 20th<\/sup>-century operatic masterpieces \u2013 including those that are finished \u2013 it requires a cast that is all but impossible to put together, a highly competent conductor and a stage director gifted with extraordinary imagination.<\/p>\n

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Gregory Kunde. Photo: Javier del Real<\/p>\n

The decision to entrust the new production of Turandot <\/em>at Madrid\u2019s Teatro Real to the care of Robert Wilson turned out to be more than appropriate. The aesthetic language of this avant-garde classic\u2019s productions arises out of the most noble traditions of Japanese theatre \u2013 clarity of space, an economy of acting closely bound up with the symbolic sphere, sensitivity to colour and the tiniest changes in lighting. Wilson creates a theatrical illusion with simple means: through the use of a cyclorama, movable panels, abstract projections, simple props that all the more bring out the gestural language he has elaborated \u2013 superficially foreign, but sufficiently precise and suggestive that its figures soon combine into a coherent semantic whole. He conveys the characters\u2019 emotions with micro-movements of the body; he paints physical sensations with fields of light and color. After a moment of disorientation, even the untrained viewer begins to associate trembling fingers with Calaf\u2019s anxiety; the flashes of red taking over the entire stage, with the pain of Li\u00f9 under torture; the grotesque dances of the three Mandarins, drawn from the commedia dell\u2019arte<\/em>, with the inhuman etiquette of Turandot\u2019s court. The entire concept is dazzling in its visual beauty, which despite this does not eclipse the individual scenes; among others, the symbolic death of the little slave girl, who slowly bows her head over folded hands \u2013 like Buddha sinking into Nirvana \u2013 after which she literally departs into non-existence, reeling, less and less visible, among the members of her own funeral procession.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s staging is also supportive to the singers \u2013 for most of the show, they are set facing the audience, unencumbered by superfluous props, creating their roles in a comfortable acoustic space. The pre-premi\u00e8re period did not pass without certain turbulences in the cast \u2013 Nina Stemme, laid low by illness, withdrew from the role of Turandot; there was also a last-minute substitution in the role of Li\u00f9. My fears notwithstanding, Irene Theorin built a convincing character of the cruel princess \u2013 with a voice of sometimes rather unpleasant colour, but intonationally secure (despite a wide vibrato), rich in overtones and skillfully diversified in expression (e.g. the superbly shaded phrase \u2018Principessa Lou-Ling\u2019 in the aria \u2018In questa reggia\u2019). I was somewhat less impressed with Yolanda Auyanet, who is very musical and technically competent, but possesses a soprano too dark and dense for the role of Li\u00f9. The extraordinarily well-favoured, subtly-delivered bass of Andrea Mastroni was perfect in the role of Timur. My sincere admiration goes to the three Mandarins \u2013 Vicen\u00e7 Esteve (Pang), Juan Antonio Sanabria (Pong), and especially the phenomenal Joan Mart\u00edn-Royo (Ping) \u2013 ideally matched in vocal terms and, unlike the rest of the cast, saddled by the stage director with a whole host of complex acting tasks, in which they acquitted themselves impeccably. But the true hero of the evening turned out to be Gregory Kunde (Calaf). This singer is unstoppable: after a forty-year stage career, the bel canto<\/em> master is more and more often taking on heroic roles \u2013 and that, with superb results. His tenor, although it has become slightly duller in the lower register, is still impressive in its large range, extraordinary culture of phrasing and freedom of vocal production in the highest notes.<\/p>\n

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Irene Theorin (Turandot). Photo: Javier del Real<\/p>\n

Nicola Luisotti led the orchestra of the Teatro Real with vigour, at very brisk tempi, but too often emphasizing juiciness and power of sound \u2013 at the expense of nuances in colour and texture. It also sometimes happened that the sound of the chorus was drowned out by the massive orchestra, which in the case of Turandot<\/em> \u2013 which is exceeded in its masterful painting of the crowd\u2019s moods probably only by the operas of Mussorgsky \u2013 should be considered a serious interpretative flaw. All of the above notwithstanding, the fact remains that the \u2018Gira la cote, gira, gira!\u2019 scene sent shivers up and down my spine.<\/p>\n

The Madrid Turandot <\/em>was performed with the finale by Franco Alfano, who conscientiously collected the dead composer\u2019s notes and, based on them, whipped up a completed version that was correct but far from Puccini\u2019s unfulfilled intention. That intention was also missed by Luciano Berio, the author of a considerably more interesting and much more rarely-played reconstruction from 2001: he took the indication \u2018poi Tristano\u2019 to heart and ended the opera with an almost literal quote from Wagner. The longer I compare the two versions, the better I understand Toscanini, who presented the work in its unfinished form at the world premi\u00e8re. Out of respect for Puccini, who thought about the solution to his Turandot\u2019s final riddle for so long that death finally overtook him.<\/p>\n

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything began to deteriorate in 1906, with the passing of Giuseppe Giacosa \u2013 the co-creator (together with Luigi Illica) of Puccini\u2019s greatest operatic successes: La Boh\u00e8me, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Two years later, a scandal broke out: Elvira Puccini accused her husband of a romance with their youthful servant girl, Doria Manfredi. It seemed that … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-mangusta","4":"post-3609","6":"format-standard","7":"category-posts-in-english","8":"category-wedrowki-operowe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3610,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions\/3610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}