Turandot premiered last Thursday, December 7th. This is Asmika Grigorjana’s debut as Turandot, while Jonas Kaufmanis sings Calaf for the first time on the opera stage. He has been heard before Turandot in the concert version, as well as immortalized Kalaf’s party companies Warner Classics/Erato published this year Turandot in the studio recording.
Staged in Vienna by the Italian maestro Marco Armillato and the German director Klaus Guth, it uses the version of the opera with the original extended finale scene composed after Puccini’s death by Franco Alfano (the so-called Alfano 1). This is contemporary Turandot interpretation without decorative oriental exotica. Asmika Grigoryan surprises with her vocal power and versatile, extraordinary interpretation of the character, as Turandot is often played as a monolithic, unchanging character. Asmika Grigoryan in tandem with Jonas Kaufman demonstrates a very human approach to the characters and the highest class of acting.
The libretto states that the opera takes place in fairy-tale time. Director Klaus Guth prefers the word “parable”, which seems to him a more accurate term than “fairy tale”: “If you try to transfer this work on stage realistically, you can quickly come to a dead end. Turandota unlike, for example, Bohemia is a likeness that is far from verism.”
Although it is known that Turandot the venue is Beijing, Klaus Guth believes that China interested the composer “only to the extent that he could rely on certain harmonic conditions and motifs associated with Chinese music – a compositional approach that creates a certain foreignness with its exoticism. This helps a little distance the work from us and pay attention to what it is really about: less about a fancy decorative theater, more about the primitive forms of organization of human coexistence and their roots”.
In the first act, Calaf’s story is told – how he feels when he finds himself in the shackles of the brutal regime of terror created by Turandot. The second act tells about the violence the title character once experienced. “I want to show the enormous effort that Turandot makes not to become a victim again. This gives her the role of a criminal. When you look into her soul, you understand in retrospect the system that Calaf encounters in the first act. The main reason is fear. An individual’s fear spreads through society and determines principles of the system. It’s the fear of being hurt, of being weak,” explains the director.
The third act outlines the relationship between Turandot and Calaf. “It’s a real love story between two modern people, and I take it very seriously. They both have to deal with themselves, and the other can help them do that. Especially nowadays, when many people slide from one relationship to the next, it’s not uncommon for them to have a bad experience, they are haunted by past experiences that cannot be simply swept away.This love story Turandot is usually not highlighted enough in productions. Liu is always perceived as the embodiment of love, while the title character is shown as a cold woman who undergoes a transformation that is hard to fathom at the end. I would like Liu to be perceived more as the bearer of a function – with her actions, she outlines the idea that creates changes in Calaf and Turandot. I see this character more as a construct, despite the moving music that Puccini dedicated to Liu,” says Klaus Guth. Liu is played by Russian soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan.
The show contains references to the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Jacques Tati. Turandot You will be able to hear in Vienna on December 16, 19 and 22 (tickets are sold out). The play will return to the repertoire on June 1, 4, 7 and 10, 2024 (in the summer Asmika Grigoryan’s partner in the role of Calaf will be Fabio Sartori).
Information: wiener-staatsoper.at
2023-12-13 21:45:36
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