A good old-fashioned opera seems to move quite slowly in this jump-cut, You-Tube age. But the potent combinations of music, characters and imagery can still sweep up an audience into the throes of a great tragic story. That’s a particular challenge in Puccini’s final work, Turandot, which serves up a hefty bit of pomp to set up its main dramatic course.
The Florentine Opera’s Turandot, which played to a sold out house Friday night, doesn’t skimp on pageantry or concept, though it’s hardly in the same league as recent outrageous productions, in which Chinese acrobats ping-pong around the stage (at La Scala earlier this year), or the action is moved to a Sweeney-Todd-like Chinese restaurant, where the princess’s execution victims become fodder for dim-sum (Rupert Goold’s 2009 version at the English National Opera).
Here, the young and recently celebrated director Eric Einhorn takes a simple but effective approach, which goes a long way toward putting some distance between our 21st-century multicultural world and Puccini’s Eurocentric vision of “The Orient.” The curtain rises on a young father (Florentine Studio Artist Dan Richardson) and his daughter curled up in a chair, reading a bedtime story. He sings to her from the book, explaining the edict at the heart of the story they are about to read. Princess Turandot has declared that any suitor must answer three riddles before he is accepted. If he fails….well, the severed heads on pikes we see as Peter Dean Beck’s impressive court setting is revealed answers that question.
Einhorn also invents some clever business to get us through the dramatically inert Act-Two scene with Ping, Pang and Pong (well sung by David Kravitz, Frank Kelly and Matthew Richardson). And he knows how to shift focus in the opera’s huge crowd scenes so we know where to focus our attention.
And he has a lot of help from an impressive set of lead voices, particularly Lisa Lindstrom, who has sung the role of the princess to great acclaim at The Met and La Scala. There’s no question of focus when Lindstrom sings her first notes in Act Two – yes, we have to wait that long. Her power is formidable, and her tone has a throaty, Callas-like pungency that suits the imperious “ice princess.” Rena Harms (Liu) and Renzo Zulian’s (Calaph) are a nice contrast to Lindstrom. Both have expressively warm voices, and – while not as powerful as Lindstrom – have no problem filling Uihlein Hall, even with a full chorus behind him.
The chorus was a weak link in this production. It’s a huge ensemble, tasked with challenging material that requires both flexibility and precision. But Friday, there were times when conductor Joseph Rescigno couldn’t seem to get the orchestra and ensemble balanced or synchronized, which made for a particularly long first act.
But overall it was a solid production with some stirring singing and inventive stagecraft, which definitely thrilled an audience hungry for one of the Italian classics.
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