Puccini's Turandot
Claus Guth (stage director), Marco Armiliato (conductor) – With Asmik Grigorian (Turandot), Jonas Kaufmann (Calaf), Kristina Mkhitaryan (Liù)...
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Cast
Claus Guth — Stage director
Etienne Pluss — Set designer
Ursula Kudrna — Costume designer
Olaf Freese — Lighting designer
Roland Horvath — Video designer
Sommer Ulrickson — Choreographer
Konrad Kuhn — Dramaturgy
Nikolaus Stenitzer — Dramaturgy
Asmik Grigorian — Turandot
Jonas Kaufmann — Calaf
Kristina Mkhitaryan — Liù
Dan Paul Dumitrescu — Timur
Martin Hässler — Ping
Norbert Ernst — Pang
Hiroshi Amako — Pong
Jörg Schneider — Altoum
Attila Mokus — A Mandarin
Program notes
"Here ends the Maestro's opera. He was there when he died", these words, spoken by the great conductor Arturo Toscanini, mark the end of the very first performance of Puccini's 1926 masterpiece Turandot at La Scala. The heavy velvet curtains close six bars after the exit of the procession surrounding Liù's corpse—where the great composer's pencil touched down for the last time, swept away by throat cancer on his hospital bed in Belgium in 1922. The work of a lifetime comes to an end: bringing together all the subjects explored by the composer in his previous creations—the mystical and fantastic of Le Villi (1884), the intimate drama with expressive melodies of La Bohème (1896), the orchestral and melodramatic pomp of Tosca (1900), the happy love story of La Fanciulla del West (1910) and the Eastern sonorities of Madame Butterfly (1904)—Turandot is Puccini's most ambitious, complex and exquisite project to date.
Based on the work by Carlo Gozzi, the libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni plunges us into a legendary version of Beijing, ruled by Emperor Altoum (Jörg Schneider) and his daughter, the cruel Princess Turandot (Asmik Grigorian). Unwilling to marry, she imposes on her suitors a test consisting of three riddles, failure of which leads to death. In the city, Prince Calaf (Jonas Kaufmann) and his father Timur (Dan Paul Dumitrescu), the deposed king of Tartary, hide out among their enemies, accompanied by their young servant Liù (Kristina Mkhitaryan), in love with the prince. Despite the protests of Timur and Liù, Calaf, dazzled by Turandot's beauty, submits to the test of the three riddles, which he wins brilliantly. Turandot then begs her father not to marry her off, and the prince, desirous of a love marriage, offers her a challenge of his own: he agrees to die if she can find his name before dawn. To find out, the princess does not hesitate to torture Liù who, refusing to talk, ends up killing herself in a final show of loyalty. Shocked by this cruelty, Calaf himself offers his life to Turandot, revealing his name. Shocked by this gesture, Turandot's shell crumbles, and as she reveals her victory to her people, she proclaims: “His name is Love!"
To make an opera out of melody: this was Puccini's ambition and great achievement in Turandot—there are few who have never crossed paths with its famous aria “Nessun dorma”! Supported by an exceptional cast, Claus Guth's staging highlights the satirical overtones of this tragedy; and under Marco Armiliato's baton, the orchestral pieces, the finest examples of Puccini's genius, are revealed in all their majesty!
