Turandot (Opera)

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    Puccini’s ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Turandot’: More Than Appropriation

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    The history and curiosity behind these operas, both set in Asia, complicate often simplistic criticisms of borrowing and stereotyping.A key relic of the genesis of Giacomo Puccini’s two operas set in Asia can be found not in Italy, where both works premiered, nor in China or Japan, where they are set, but — of all places — in Morristown, N.J.There, in the Morris Museum’s collection of mechanical musical instruments and automata, is a music box from around 1877. During a visit to the museum in 2012, the musicologist W. Anthony Sheppard happened upon the box and, listening to it, was surprised to find that it contained melodies present in those Puccini operas, “Madama Butterfly” (1904) and “Turandot” (left unfinished at his death in 1924).Sheppard and other scholars came to believe that the box — made in Switzerland, exported to China, returned to Europe and owned in Italy before it was acquired by the brewing heir and prodigious collector Murtogh D. Guinness and donated to the Morris Museum — may have been the exact one that Puccini encountered at a friend’s home and quoted in his classic works.This plain brown music box is therefore central to the ambivalence that lately surrounds Puccini, “Madama Butterfly” and “Turandot,” and the amorphous label of appropriation that has been applied to both. It reminds us that Puccini, who was always searching to endow his scores with “local color,” didn’t just compose exotic-seeming, faux-Asian tunes for his operas, but also sought out actual Asian examples. These works are tributes to the curiosity about other cultures — the desire to blend your traditions with others’ and tell stories about more than just yourself — that has animated art for as long as humans have been making it.“When the heart speaks, whether in China or Holland,” Puccini wrote to one of his “Turandot” librettists, “it says only one thing, and the outcome is the same for everyone.”A music box, from around 1877, containing Chinese melodies that Puccini quoted.Morris MuseumWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ukrainian Conductor Oksana Lyniv Arrives at the Met Opera

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      Oksana Lyniv, who is leading “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera, has used her platform to criticize Russia and promote Ukrainian culture.The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv was preparing for a performance of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera this month when she saw the news: A Russian drone had hit a building in Odesa, not far from the home of her parents-in-law.She called her family to ensure they were safe. But images of the attack, whose victims included a young mother and children, lingered in her mind. When she conducted that night, she felt the pain of war more acutely, she said, praying to herself when Liù, a selfless servant, dies in the opera’s final act and the chorus turns hushed.“In that moment, I saw all the suffering of the war,” she said. “How do you explain such sadness? How do you explain who gets to be alive and who has to die?”Since the invasion, Lyniv, 46, the first Ukrainian conductor to perform at the Met, has used her platform to denounce Russia’s government. She has also set out to promote Ukrainian culture, championing works by Ukrainian composers and touring Europe with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, an ensemble that she founded in 2016.The war has raised difficult questions for artists and cultural institutions. Russian performers have come under pressure to speak out against President Vladimir V. Putin. Ukrainians have faced questions too, including whether to perform Russian works or appear alongside Russian artists.Lyniv, who now lives in Düsseldorf, Germany, has sometimes felt caught in the middle. She protested last month when a festival in Vienna announced plans to pair her appearance with a concert led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has come under scrutiny over his connections to Russia. (The festival canceled his appearance.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Met Opera, the Show Goes On After a Technical Mishap

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      The company put on a semi-staged version of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the last minute, after a backstage lift got jammed.The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Puccini’s “Turandot” is one of the most lavish and intricate in the company’s repertoire, a spectacle that includes an imperial palace, a glittering throne room and expansive gardens.But on Wednesday evening, audience members had to make do without the opera’s usual visual delights. A jam in the Met’s main lift backstage forced the company to put on a semi-staged version at the last minute, with the cast and chorus singing from an improvised set instead.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, walked onstage before the show to explain the situation.“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say that this is not going to be a normal night at the opera,” he said. “Although our scenery will not be working, the show will go on.”Audience members were offered a refund if they wished to leave, and about 150 people did, the Met said. But most stayed, offering a hearty applause when the conductor, Oksana Lyniv, entered the pit. (The Met, which has about 3,800 seats, said that the performance’s paid attendance was about 80 percent of capacity before the problem was announced.)Gelb said in an interview that the machinery jammed around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, while the Met was changing sets for “Turandot” after a rehearsal for Puccini’s “La Rondine,” which opens next week. Crew members tried using saws to cut through steel bars to free the lift, but their efforts were unsuccessful.By about 6:30 p.m., one hour before the show was to begin, Gelb had to make a decision: cancel the show, or move forward with a pared-down version. He said he was reluctant to turn audiences away.“Everybody rallied together,” he said.The Met used a piece of scenery from the second act of “Turandot” — a wall in the imperial palace — as a backdrop, to provide some color. The action was confined to roughly the first 20 feet of the stage.Gelb tried to encourage the singers by telling them that their music would be more powerful, telling the tenor SeokJong Baek that when he sang the famous aria “Nessun dorma,” “you’ll be that much closer the audience.”Technical mishaps have rarely stopped productions at the Met. In 1966, when the Lincoln Center house was opened, a turntable malfunctioned at a dress rehearsal for Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” The soprano Leontyne Price narrowly escaped being trapped inside the pyramid on top of it. And in 2011, a performance of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” was delayed for 45 minutes because of a technical problem with the 45-ton set.Gelb said that he expected things to be back to normal in time for a performance of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” on Thursday.“Tonight as soon as show ends,” he said, “it will be all hands on deck to free this lift.” More

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      Review: The Met Opera’s ‘Turandot’ Returns With a Strong Debut

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      In a revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s lavish production, the conductor Oksana Lyniv led a performance that transcended the gilded stage dressing.Puccini’s “Turandot,” a verismo opera set in a fabled version of ancient China, makes for an odd love story. Its unlikable romantic leads go largely unfazed by the death and dismemberment they instigate; when they finally share true love’s kiss, they’re standing atop a figurative pile of corpses.On Wednesday at the Metropolitan Opera, the conductor Oksana Lyniv made a strong debut, emphasizing the murderous, life-or-death stakes instead of the fairy-tale Orientalism that has made it a cultural lightning rod in recent years.“Turandot” has been on the receiving end of calls for revision and more for the stereotypes it perpetuates about Chinese people — such as its “dragon lady” title princess — recalling an imperialistic era of European chauvinism.The reckoning around “Turandot” creates a problem for the Met, because the company’s long-running production, a lavish spectacle introduced by the director Franco Zeffirelli in 1987, is a hit. The gold-and-ecru throne room of Act II still dazzles, and eye-popping exoticism runs rampant, with acrobats, ribbon dancers, curled-roof pavilions and a dragon puppet.But that stage dressing was not present in Lyniv’s exciting conducting. The brass stabs that open Act I had an almost expressionistic quality — severe, vital, grim — and the ones that closed it were cold, powerful and withholding. Taut strings and slinky woodwinds moved with dramatic, serpentine efficiency. Lyniv seized opportunities to foreground astringent harmonies.Turandot’s motif, which Puccini based on a Chinese folk song, was splendid without being decorative in Act I, and warmly earthy in Act III after the princess had been humbled. Lyniv’s sense of rubato created just enough elasticity for the singers to phrase naturally, as in the ministers’ dreamily nostalgic “Ho una casa nell’Honan.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Tenor SeokJong Baek Makes His Met Debut

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      SeokJong Baek, a South Korean tenor about to make his Metropolitan Opera debut, has had a meteoric journey to the most hallowed halls of the opera world. But to hear him tell it, his whirlwind career has been simply about timing.On a recent sweltering day over coffee in this city’s Gangnam neighborhood — where coffee can cost up to $8 — Mr. Baek spoke about his career with an innocent modesty. He will make his debut at the Met as Ismaele in Verdi’s “Nabucco” (opening Thursday) just a couple of years after retraining his voice from baritone to tenor.Three of his first roles as a tenor were at the Royal Opera House in London, a level of prestige that many singers work years, if not decades, to achieve. It’s an enviable trajectory for any opera singer, and one that Mr. Baek, 37, seems to shrug off as just the story of a humble guy from South Korea who got a break. Or, one might say, a series of breaks.Born in Jeonju in southwestern South Korea, Mr. Baek studied music in high school and at Chugye University for the Arts in Seoul before moving to Toronto to study English and work for a few years. In 2010, he was accepted into the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees (with a two-year stint back in South Korea for his required military service). He graduated in 2019.But a chance meeting that same year with the South Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee changed the course of his career.“Yonghoon said that I had a great voice as a baritone, but that he heard something different in my voice,” Mr. Baek recalled. “He said that I could be a greater tenor.”Along with a piano accompanist at Mr. Lee’s apartment in New York, Mr. Baek sang “Recondita armonia” from Act I of “Tosca.”“I was shocked how I could sing the upper register,” he said. “We were all a bit surprised.”Mr. Baek performing in “Cavalleria Rusticana” with Aleksandra Kurzak at the Royal Opera House.Tristram Kenton/Royal Opera HouseSoon after, Mr. Baek was accepted at the young artists program at the San Francisco Opera as a baritone. But for the final student concert in late 2019, he was allowed to sing the same aria from “Tosca” and another tenor aria.“I decided to change my voice in September, and the concert was in December, so that was a very short period of time to prepare as a tenor,” Mr. Baek said. “Going from tenor to baritone is easier. But to go from baritone to tenor is much more difficult. But I made it.”Two months later, the pandemic hit, and Mr. Baek spent that time retraining himself to be a tenor, which involved vocal exercises and “opening up my chest to resonate with my whole body” and repeating the high register over and over.“For 90 minutes almost every day for 18 months, I sang by myself at the San Francisco Korean United Methodist Church in my neighborhood,” he recalled. “The training was quite brutal. It was lonely. And for a few months, it didn’t work. But after about a year, I could maintain the high register on several arias.”Soon after, he took first prize at the prestigious Loren L. Zachary voice competition in Los Angeles in 2021 — as a tenor — and then took first prize later that year at the Vincerò opera competition in Italy, where he met a casting director from the Royal Opera who arranged an audition. This led to his being cast as the cover, or standby, for the role of Samson in the Royal Opera’s “Samson and Delilah” in May 2022. It was his first role as a tenor.Mr. Baek performing the role of Samson in “Samson and Delilah” at the Royal Opera House.Tristram Kenton/Royal Opera HouseIn early 2022, before performances began, the tenor Nicky Spence had a serious leg injury and had to cancel all performances as Samson. Mr. Baek was suddenly tapped for eight performances.“It’s been an extraordinary trajectory,” Oliver Mears, the Royal Opera’s director of opera, said in a recent video interview. “It’s not unheard-of to go from baritone to tenor, since it really is a matter of retraining the voice, but I think the thing that struck me about SeokJong was that he hadn’t had any real stage performances when he was seen at a competition.”The week after “Samson” ended with great success at the Royal Opera, alongside the mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as Delilah, the tenor Jonas Kaufmann dropped out of “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Mr. Baek was asked to step in.“It was crazy,” he said. “I didn’t know the opera and there was only two weeks before opening night. I had three shows left of ‘Samson’ while I was learning ‘Cavalleria Rusticana.’”He was then offered the role of Radames in “Aida” in May of this year after the tenor Francesco Meli dropped out of the final five performances.Mr. Baek in New York. He says his performance schedule is almost fully booked into 2027.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“When I saw him in ‘Aida,’ I was struck at how much he had progressed,” Mr. Mears said. “Richard Jones, the director, and Tony [Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera] worked him incredibly hard on ‘Samson,’ and he absorbed everything they threw at him.”A casting director from the Metropolitan Opera had attended a “Samson” performance and offered Mr. Baek the upcoming role in “Nabucco.” Mr. Baek was also given the role of Calaf in “Turandot” at the Met, which will open Feb. 28 (he has sung that role now a few times in concert, including this year in Seoul, and at smaller opera houses). From there, Mr. Baek said, his performance schedule is almost fully booked into 2027.“I’m a little bit of an introverted guy from South Korea,” he said. “Everything has happened so fast. Sometimes it feels like I still don’t realize what’s happening.He paused, and smiled, taking a sip of that $8 coffee.“But what I really need to do is accomplish the things ahead of me right now,” he said. More

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      Dropping Anna Netrebko, the Met Turns to a Ukrainian Diva

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      The Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, replacing one of Russia’s biggest stars in “Turandot,” is using her platform to defend her country.The call from the Metropolitan Opera came one afternoon in early March.Liudmyla Monastyrska, a Ukrainian soprano, was in Poland, shopping for concert dresses ahead of a performance. Her phone rang, and it was Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, on the other end. He was blunt: His company was in a bind.Ukraine had recently been invaded, and the Met had parted ways with the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko over her previous support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Gelb wanted Monastyrska, a charismatic singer known for her lush sound, to replace Netrebko in a revival of Puccini’s “Turandot,” which opens on Saturday.Monastyrska, 46, was reluctant. In 2015, after a punishing run at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv, she had vowed never to perform the title role of “Turandot” again, worn down by its demands. And she was nervous about getting caught in the politics of the Russian invasion and alienating Netrebko, one of opera’s biggest stars, whom she has known for seven years.Gelb reassured Monastyrska, promising that her appearance would help bring attention to the plight of the Ukrainian people.“I was surprised, but I felt it was important for me to sing,” Monastyrska said in an interview. “I wanted to help however I could.” She still felt uneasy, though. “I don’t like to sing other people’s contracts,” she said.Throughout her career, Monastyrska has made a studied effort to avoid politics. She does not have a Facebook page and tries not to read the news, preferring to focus on her family, her faith (she’s Ukrainian Orthodox) and her artistry.But in recent weeks, as the war in Ukraine has intensified, she has found a political voice. She has criticized Netrebko’s meandering statements on the invasion, saying that Netrebko’s opposition to the war and attempts to distance herself from Putin have come too late. She has railed against the Russian government (“They are killing people for no reason,” she said in the interview) and denounced artists who continue to support Moscow.Yonghoon Lee, left, and Monastyrska in a recent rehearsal for “Turandot” at the Met.Lila Barth for The New York TimesHer profile will likely rise in the months ahead. Next season, she will step in for another artist who has come under fire for her ties to Putin, replacing the Russian soprano Hibla Gerzmava in a Met revival of “Tosca,” the company said on Thursday. (Gerzmava had been criticized for signing a letter in support of Putin in 2014.)And the Met announced this week that Monastyrska will be front and center when the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, a newly formed ensemble of Ukrainian musicians, tours Europe and the United States this summer. She will sing “Abscheulicher,” an aria from Beethoven’s “Fidelio” that touches on themes of peace, injustice and humanity.“She is a powerful, vocal symbol of the Ukrainian cause,” Gelb said in an interview, “and it will be manifested every night of the tour, when she’s singing Beethoven’s words against oppression and call for freedom. The opening recitative of the aria she is singing could be addressed directly to Putin.”Gelb said he chose her for “Turandot” primarily because of her “very beautiful and incredibly powerful voice.”“It’s a voice that can knock ‘Turandot’ out of the park in a house like the Met,” he added. “The fact that she’s Ukrainian is an extra element of poetic justice that certainly didn’t go unnoticed.”Born in Kyiv, Monastyrska trained in Ukrainian conservatories and spent much of her early career in opera houses there. Her break on the global stage came in 2010, at 35, when she was asked to sing, with only a week’s notice, the title role in Puccini’s “Tosca” with the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.She made her Met debut in 2012, taking up the title role in Verdi’s “Aida.” In The New York Times, the critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim described her performance as a “triumphant house debut,” saying she had arrived at the Met a “fully mature artist.”“She is gifted with a luscious round soprano that maintains its glow even in the softest notes,” da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote.Monastyrska became known for sensitive portrayals of opera’s most famous characters, including Lady Macbeth, Manon Lescaut and Abigaille in Verdi’s “Nabucco,” which she sang at the Met in 2016. Her blossoming career brought her into the same orbit as Netrebko, who is four years older. She described Netrebko as a “very warm person” and a “fantastic singer”; once, Monastyrska was invited to Netrebko’s apartment in New York for a party around Thanksgiving.Monastyrska in the title role of “Aida” at the Met in 2012.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesShortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the two crossed paths in Naples, Italy, where they were appearing on alternate nights in the same production of “Aida.” During a rehearsal, Monastyrska said, Netrebko approached her and told her that she opposed the idea of war between the two countries.Later, Netrebko came under pressure to publicly denounce the war and Putin, whom she had supported in the past. She had endorsed his re-election and was photographed in 2014 holding a flag used by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine.After condemning the war but remaining silent on Putin, Netrebko saw her engagements in Europe and North America evaporate. She issued a new statement last month seeking to distance herself from Putin, saying that she had met him only a few times and that she was not “allied with any leader of Russia.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

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      At 80, Robert Wilson Holds On to a Singular Vision for the Stage

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      Slowed but not stopped by the pandemic, Wilson has had a busy fall that continues with his production of “Turandot” at the Paris Opera.PARIS — The American director Robert Wilson has one of the most recognizable styles in modern theater. Honed over decades, his starkly drawn tableaus of abstract lines and shapes, lit with minute precision, have adorned Shakespeare plays and Philip Glass operas alike.And Wilson, who turned 80 in October, isn’t about to depart from that formula.Last week, as the Paris Opera put the finishing touches on his production of Puccini’s “Turandot,” which premiered at the Teatro Real in 2018 and opens here with a preview for young audiences on Wednesday, Wilson zeroed in on the minuscule imperfections, nudging performers centimeters closer to their marks. A misshapen reflection of the moon on the stage brought rehearsal to a stop. As the lighting team scrambled to fix the spot, he turned to them and asked, “Where is it?”“Some of his shows have 2,000 light cues, so you have to be very organized,” John Torres, a lighting designer who has worked with Wilson for a decade, said during a rehearsal break. “It’s a little bit of a puzzle.”Wilson’s “Turandot” production premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 2018.Javier del Real/Teatro RealWilson has 184 stage productions to his name, along with many revivals, and neither age nor the pandemic have slowed him down. “I forget that I’m 80, because I’m fortunate that I’m still working,” he said in an interview at the Opéra Bastille. “I’m booked for the next two years, solid.”In Paris alone this fall, Wilson has brought four shows to stages around town. In addition to “Turandot,” his “Jungle Book,” a 2019 musical inspired by Rudyard Kipling, brought stilted animals to the Théâtre du Châtelet. He also reunited with the choreographer Lucinda Childs, with whom he staged Glass’s landmark “Einstein on the Beach” in 1976: As part of the Paris Autumn Festival, they presented a new creation (“Bach 6 Solo”) and a revival (“I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating,” from 1977).While Europe has long celebrated Wilson as one of the most important directors of the past century, he has been less of a prophet at home. His boundary-pushing artistic statements — “Deafman Glance,” a hit in France in 1971, was seven hours long and wordless — never secured him regular commissions in the United States, even though Wilson has had what he calls his own arts “laboratory,” the Watermill Center on Long Island, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year.Speaking about his busy Paris season, Wilson said that he probably won’t have as many productions in New York “until I die.” His longstanding disdain for naturalism hasn’t helped. “What are they thinking about, in these dramas in New York?” he asked. “They have all this psychology. Does it have to be that complicated?”Wilson, center, during a rehearsal for “Turandot,” one of four shows he has in Paris this fall.Julien Mignot for The New York TimesIn lieu of psychology, Wilson’s work is driven by image and sound, and was shaped by early encounters with forward-looking choreographers. After a difficult youth as the gay son of a conservative family in Texas, where he initially studied business administration, Wilson moved to New York in 1963 and discovered the work of Merce Cunningham and, especially, George Balanchine, whose large repertoire of plotless ballets have Wilson’s favor. (Nonetheless, he admitted to liking Balanchine’s ever-popular “Nutcracker” staging, a fixture of the holiday season at New York City Ballet and elsewhere.)“That changed my life,” Wilson said. “I thought that if theater could be like that, if opera could be like that, then I was interested.”Wilson approaches theater and opera in the same way. Even when he works with straightforward plays, as in his production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” that opened in October in Sofia, Bulgaria, sentences tend to be distorted in artificial ways.“His take on text is almost strictly musical,” said the French performer Yuming Hey, who plays Mowgli in “Jungle Book.” In an email, Childs, the choreographer, said that “rhythm and timing are his foremost concerns” and that Wilson’s vision “hasn’t changed” much in the five decades she has known him.In fact, Wilson’s aesthetic has been singularly consistent, down to details like the white makeup performers wear and their stylized hand gestures. To his critics, this sameness glosses over the differences between the works he stages. To Wilson, it’s just a way of acknowledging that a stage is “unlike any other space in the world,” as he told the cast of “Turandot,” and to craft visuals that help the audience “hear better than with their eyes closed.”“To see someone try to act natural onstage seems so artificial,” he said in an interview later. “If you accept it as being something artificial, in the long run, it seems more natural, for me.”Wilson’s aesthetic has been singularly consistent, including details like the white makeup performers wear and their stylized hand gestures.Javier del Real/Teatro RealHey said that during preparations for “Jungle Book,” the first step for him was to learn what he called “Wilson’s grammar,” which is often taught by assistant stagers. In auditions, he was given exercises with directions such as “stand still, like a sun, and shine while keeping the position and staying focused.”Somewhat paradoxically, Wilson’s work has consistently been described as avant-garde as other aesthetic trends have come and gone. “It’s a very interesting word, because for me, avant-garde means to rediscover the classics,” Wilson said. “All my works are based on classical patterns.”Work, for Wilson and his team, starts at 7 a.m. and often extends late into the evening. “It’s just what he does, so he kind of expects everyone to do the same,” said Julian Mommert, who was Wilson’s assistant for two years and now works as international relations and tour manager for the choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou. Mommert remembered Wilson as “very open and funny and warm,” but ultimately left in 2014, because of exhaustion.Wilson’s only break each year is a one-week trip to Bali around Christmas. “I go to a very modest hotel,” he said. “I’ve been going there for 30-something years, and no one knows who I am. I like the people; I like the food.”“Work for me is not really work; it’s a way of living,” Wilson said.Julien Mignot for The New York TimesWilson didn’t even take a substantial break during the pandemic. In 2020, he spent several months in Berlin, at the Akademie der Künste. “I had a beautiful studio and I made lots of drawings,” he said. How did he fare away from the stage? “Of course one is upset, but working is like breathing. I just kept on breathing.”Still, the forced pause had “a tremendous impact” on his production machine, Wilson said. Performances were canceled, along with the Watermill Center’s 2020 summer festival and gala — which, he said, typically brings in “as much as 2 or 2.4 million” dollars. For summer 2021, because of travel restrictions, he did not invite his usual international roster of guests and residents but more local artists instead, for a weeklong festival organization with the artist Carrie Mae Weems.“Work for me is not really work; it’s a way of living,” Wilson said. “I’m still the same person I was when I first started working in the theater.”And at the Paris Opera, behind his single-minded focus and solemn demeanor, a hint of playfulness occasionally resurfaced with the cast of “Turandot.” Wilson described the opera as “a fairy tale, another world,” in which the Chinese princess Turandot, who initially refuses to marry, “is having fun being evil.” His minimalist aesthetic steers clear of orientalism, although the comic trio of ministers, renamed Jim, Bob and Bill when the production was performed by the Canadian Opera Company in 2019, are here restored as Ping, Pang and Pong.“The reason we make theater is to have fun,” Wilson told the singers. “You can’t take this work too seriously.” More

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      Review: The Met’s ‘Turandot,’ Strongly Sung, Garishly Staged

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      Christine Goerke and Yusif Eyvazov star in a revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s production, which adds gaudiness to Puccini’s sophisticated score.By opening its season a few weeks ago with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the first work by a Black composer in its history, the Metropolitan Opera was attempting to engage with the present moment, in all its roiling complexities.But on Tuesday the old Met, a company of grand tradition and unabashed spectacle, returned with a revival of Puccini’s “Turandot” in Franco Zeffirelli’s glittering, gaudy, opulent, tacky and overwhelmingly popular 1987 production.When this production was last mounted, in the fall of 2019, the lead roles of Turandot, an icy Chinese princess, and Calàf, the prince who seeks to win her love, were sung splendidly by the soprano Christine Goerke and the tenor Yusif Eyvazov. Assuming these demanding parts again on Tuesday, they were even better.But 2019 seems a long time ago. Much has changed since the pandemic forced the closure of cultural institutions around the world, including a wave of anti-Asian hostility that has compelled the arts to re-examine lingering prejudices and racist stereotypes. For some, “Turandot” — not just Zeffirelli’s extravagant production, but the opera itself, set in the fantastical Peking of legend — is an example of the problem. As much as I love the music, and as often as I’ve seen (or put up with) this staging, it was impossible not to view it this time in this context.To hear Puccini’s score as rife with awkward evocations of Asian exotica and stereotypes is, to me, unfair. The story of “Turandot,” which is based on a fairy tale by the 18th-century Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi, prodded Puccini, who had already absorbed elements of Asian music, to explore those sources even further. In the score, he incorporates several Chinese melodies. Like Debussy, who had an epiphany when he attended an 1889 exposition of Asian arts and culture in Paris, Puccini was genuinely excited by Chinese culture. He doesn’t just drop these tunes into this score, but blends them — with nuance and respect — into his own Italianate, 20th-century harmonic language.Goerke sang the daunting aria “In questa reggia” with steely sound and thrilling intensity.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStill, the characters can come off as clichéd or worse. And it’s too easy to dismiss concerns by saying the opera is just a fairy tale, or that Zeffirelli’s production is just an over-the-top costume epic that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.Perhaps the most problematic characters — at least in Zeffirelli’s interpretation — are the trio of royal ministers with names that can make today’s audiences cringe: Ping, Pang and Pong (in this revival, Hyung Yun, Tony Stevenson and Eric Ferring). True to Gozzi, Puccini was evoking stock types out of commedia dell’arte. As the ministers bicker, chatter and fret over the deadly riddles Turandot puts her suitors through, he gives the three ministers much bustling, comedic music to sing. Yet the orchestra keeps needling the vocal lines with jabbing dissonances and modernist harmonic twists, so a sober subtext comes through.And there are stretches when the ministers pine for their homes in the country and yearn for the old times that are some of the most beguiling music in the opera. These ravishing episodes are lush with Impressionist-like harmonic writing and hazy colorings. (You almost hear Puccini saying, “Take that, Debussy!”) The issue is less the score than the production: The Met could rid Zeffirelli’s staging of the mincing, fan-waving antics, allowing the ministers to appear as the sage observers they are.Goerke and Eyvazov sang so well that I was swept up in Puccini’s music during their scenes, despite the silvery extravagance of the imperial palace, here so bright you almost squint. Goerke sang the daunting aria “In questa reggia” with steely sound and thrilling intensity, and, later, soared impressively over the full chorus and orchestra. Eyvazov, an athletic-looking Calàf, had beefy sound and clarion top notes, getting a big ovation for his “Nessun dorma.”Puccini’s score blends Chinese melodies into his Italianate, 20th-century harmonic language, but Zeffirelli’s 1987 staging can feel over-the-top.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe soprano Gabriella Reyes, her voice radiant and rich in vibrato, was an uncommonly strong Liù, the servant in love with Calàf; Timur, Calàf’s father, was the stalwart bass-baritone James Morris, appearing 50 years after his Met debut. The superb Met chorus has Puccini’s score and Zeffirelli’s staging down pat; the singing in the big ensemble scenes was glorious. The conductor Marco Armiliato led a sure-paced and colorful performance.But what is the Met to do with this production, which seems increasingly anachronistic? Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, got burned in 2009 when he replaced Zeffirelli’s grandly realistic production of “Tosca” with a sparer, grimmer staging that was booed at its premiere and, in time, cast aside. This “Turandot” has drawn audiences for decades. But the time may have come for a more probing and restrained take on what is — for me and many others — Puccini’s great final opera.TurandotThrough Nov. 16 (and in the spring with a different cast) at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More