A MASTERFUL OPERA TO LOSE YOUR HEAD OVER
                     The Puccini-Hockney 'Turnadot' at S.F. Opera
                                              By D. Rane Danubian
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Sept. 18-25,  2011
                                                                  Vol. 14, No. 7
            Is the hot-dog-and-fries-munching stadium crowd ready to confront one if the most blood-curdling killers in all opera?
            Well, we’ll soon find out with the Sept. 25 live telecast of the S.F. Opera’s “Turandot” in the AT&T baseball park, where you can sedately chomp on peanuts while princes courting the cruel Turandot are having their heads chopped off by the executioner with the oversize sword, honed to a light-glint edge.
            Just another day at the opera, which invented violence long before it became a neighborhood-news byword. This is Puccini’s masterpiece, his posthumous opera that is part dream-fantasy, part grim fairy tale, part lurid drama out of ancient China. And that fire-and-ice killer Princess Turandot seeks vengeance for a historic predecessor abused by a male, doing away with every would-be suitor unless he can answer three daunting puzzle questions.
            The 1926 score represents a quantum jump by the aged Puccini, who moved on to unprecedented chromaticism, occasional pentatonic excursions,  and a thoroughly exotic-eastern feel to his opus, resulting in a unique Italian-Chinese hybrid concept. Every modern-day mounting wrestles with this hybrid, always unsure just how Italian you dare to make it.
            The production on stage, as seen live on Sept. 17, is an amazing orgy of color, the brilliant invention of producer-artist David Hockney. Since first seen here in 1993, it has been rented out to myriad opera companies---a welcome source of income for the S.F. Opera.
            This version seeks a middle ground between Italian and Chinese---no Asian makeup on  the singers, but extraordinary old Chinese court-robe designs (Ian Falconer costumes). Overall, it’s a fairy-tale fantasy-----grim in content, yet voluptuous in color.
            The cast heard Sept. 17 offered a great surprise in the Liú of fast-rising soprano Leah Crocetto, who just three years ago was a struggling Adler Fellow (apprentice) here, but clearly already en route to a very promising operatic future. She does not look like the most mobile of figures, but she moved neatly about the stage and brought poignancy and power to her two big arias---“Signor, ascolta,” and her death-scene soliloquy.
            The Puccini score terminates shortly after her suicide, with the last quarter-hour composed by the considerably lesser Franco Alfano providing a pompous love duet for Turandot and her one suitor with head still attached, Calaf. (When the great conductor Arturo Toscanini first led the opera, he made headlines omitting the Alfano codicil, announcing that, here the master Puccini laid down his pen, here we go no further.)
            The rest of the cast was serviceable. Tenor Marco Berti (Calaf) did his role in  the large-scale Italian manner, winning  plaudits for his bold “Nessun dorma” (No One Sleeps). That aria  became signature number of the late Luciano Pavarotti, though he never sang Calaf at the S.F. Opera despite his many seasons here.
            In the title role, the much ballyhooed Swedish dramatic soprano Iréne Theorin disappointed, straining and wobbling until the final act, when  her voice, fully warmed up, projected handsomely throughout the hall. Along the way, the night’s fourth star was the 80-member opera chorus, generously filling the hall while caarrying out the choreography of a Peking populace cringing under the thumb of the cruel princess.
            Leading the pit orchestra was Music Director Nicola Luisotti, with an ensemble that sounded worthy of an emperor’s ransom.                 Puccini’s “Turandot,” in Italian, at the S.F. Opera till Oct. 4, including with a live ballpark telecast at AT&T Park Sept. 25 at 2 p.m. For info: (415) 864-3330, or go online.

        ©D. Rane Danubian 2011
                                       #
        D. Rane Danubian has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
                      #
            Return to main menu.