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VERSION:2.0
PRODID:www.oper-in-berlin.de
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UID:6a7c7f738da7b
DTSTART:20260623T193000
SEQUENCE:0
TRANSP:OPAQUE
DTEND:20260623T213000
LOCATION:Deutsche Oper Berlin\, Berlin
SUMMARY:Turandot
CLASS:PUBLIC
DESCRIPTION:In his last opera\, which was left unfinished\, Puccini explore
 d the aesthetics of the new mass medium of film. Lorenzo Fioroni's product
 ion builds a bridge between the oppressed but sensation-seeking Chinese op
 era-going public and the consumers of the modern media world ... Conductor
 : Daniel Carter\; Director: Lorenzo Fioroni\; With Catherine Foster\, Ange
 lo Villari / SeokJong Baek\, Nina Solodovnikova / Maria Motolygina\, Micha
 el Bachtadze\, Kangyoon Shine Lee\, Thomas Cilluffo et al.\nAbout the work
 A nation is cowed by its princess. Turandot\, beautiful and fascinating re
 presentative of a royal dynasty\, presides over a gruesome ritual: only he
 r marriage to a suitor will bring an end to the violence\, but no would-be
  bridegroom has yet managed to solve the riddles. The same old spectacle p
 lays out\, ending in yet another execution\, until Calaf\, the son of a de
 posed ruler from a foreign land\, unexpectedly answers the riddles correct
 ly. He then turns the tables on Turandot\, forcing her to answer his own q
 uestion if she wants to steal out of her obligation. Puccini’s times are
  changing rapidly\, the art world is going through drastic transformation 
 and new\, abstract forms are being coined to reflect modern-day experience
 . And the composer\, in his early 60s\, is again trying to break new groun
 d. \n\nPuccini spent the last four years of his life working on TURANDOT\,
  based on a fairy tale by Carlo Gozzi [1762]. The score was his richest an
 d altogether most dissonant. Far from being the soundtrack to a cutesy pic
 ture of a doll-like China\, the exotic music provided the backdrop to a wo
 rld suffused in an atmosphere of unimaginable cruelty. Try as he might\, P
 uccini never did settle on a resolution to his drama. The composer who was
  ever leery of happy endings never managed to escape from the dead-end tha
 t he’d created for himself through Liù’s sacrifice and the imminent p
 airing of Turandot and Calaf. The question of how the two might ever disco
 ver some common ground remained unanswered. Puccini was variously intrigue
 d and repelled by the idea of presenting of an all-encompassing love as a 
 means to redemption in the face of everything that speaks against it – a
 nd could not bring himself to paint such a utopia. He left only a fragment
  behind when he died and the Ricordi publishing house brought in the compo
 ser Franco Alfano to complete the opera\, based on sketches left behind by
  Puccini.\n\nAbout the productionLorenzo Fioroni’s production sets the a
 ction of the story in a fairy-tale realm of indeterminable period but one 
 which nonetheless is reminiscent of modern-day dictatorships. The riddle a
 nd execution scenes are dwelt on and give the impression that violence pla
 ys a ritualistic\, quasi-religious role. Pitted against this is the desire
 \, expressed repeatedly by the elite and the plebs\, to end the oppression
  and see all groups reconciled. It is on this taut spectrum between violen
 t rule and a yearning for love that Calaf and Turandot circle each other. 
 Yet instead of pouring oil on troubled waters\, the new couple usher in a 
 new era of terror.\n\nFioroni rummages in the psychologies of the main pro
 tagonists and discovers in both a marked tendency towards violence. Calaf\
 , too\, is the scion of a former despot and\, by looking on as Liù sacrif
 ices herself for him\, shows that saving face and achieving his goals is m
 ore important to him than saving lives. And it is this area of unscrupulou
 s overlap that makes his final pact with Turandot plausible. And so it goe
 s: their unfolding passion is reflected not in an overturning of the bruta
 l system but in a continuation of tyranny.
DTSTAMP:20260812T141307Z
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