dramatic confrontation, in the second scene of Act Two.
Princess Turandot of China suffers from an icy heart, and a
jones toward men. Any male of royal blood may woo her, but
must answer three riddles. If his answers are correct, she
marries him; if they’re wrong, you guessed it: He dies. Every
prince who’s tried up to now has contributed his severed head
to Turandot’s collection; the Chinese nation, ruled by an
ancient, weary emperor, is caught up in the drama, with peo-
ple either turning cynical, or lusting for more blood.
Calaf, it won’t surprise any reader to learn, is the prince
who answers the riddles and melts Tu r a n d o t ’s heart. But first
she must defy him, explaining with frigid passion that the
whole scheme is designed to avenge a female ancestor who’d
been horribly violated, and then flinging a threat at the prince,
the kind of utterance that only makes sense in the unreal world
of fantasy (or opera): “The riddles are three, but death is one!”
She sings this, of course, in a phrase that rises to a high
note. “The riddles are three,” replies our game hero, taking the
musical arc even higher, “but
life
is one!” And then both of
them hurl their lines at each other, both singing at once, tak-
ing the music to the highest note yet. I would have thought
nobody, not even Richard Nixon, could have sung that music
without shameless excitement, if only because the high notes
won’t come out without some physical oomph behind them,
and because exuberance would be anyone’s natural reaction
after surging through them successfully. Like many other
great operatic moments, this one isn’t just music and drama,
but also an athletic feat.
So what happened in the Forbidden City? The Tu r a n d o t ,
soprano Giovanna Casolla, has a voice a size or two too small
for her forbidding role, so she has to work a bit too noticeably
to project her formidable music. I’ve already noted Mr. Larin’s
lack of conviction, though I later found that I’d been unfair to
him. He
can
sing passionately, but he doesn’t get involved with
anyone else on stage. His best moments are those that are his
alone, especially his famous aria, “Nessun dorma,” at the start
of Act Three. His worst are those that absolutely
demand interaction, like his blessing of poor Liú
(will anyone, by the way, be surprised to learn
that, in the end, she sacrifices her life to save
Calaf?), and his defiance of Turandot. So when
the moment for the highest high note comes, here’s what we
see. Both singers take a careful breath; then, with equal care,
they sing their lines. No drama, no music, no atheleticism; just
abstract performance, as if the two had been bred in a tank of
nutrients and trained to accomplish this task, with no idea that
anything raw and human was involved.
The Liú, soprano Barbara Frittoli, was miles better, a singer
fully equal to the human, vocal, and musical challenge of her
role, the one member of this cast who wouldn’t have been out
of place in the long-gone golden age (though, to be honest,
those years were only golden when the good singers sang; there
were more bad ones than there are now, and when
they
got on
stage, you’d want to run for the hills). But in the first act, at
least, Frittoli seemed to
publish
her music, rather than sing it.
It seemed far too premeditated. “Yes, this is how I sing Liú,” she
might have advertised. “I always do it just like this.” Perhaps
she wasn’t helped by the traditional Beijing Opera poses direc-
tor Zhang Yimou prescribed for her, a tricky hurdle for opera
singers, and maybe Zhang’s only miscalculation; she executed
them well enough, but not with any spontaneity.
When I sat down to watch the whole thing through, then,
I wasn’t surprised that the first two acts were a chore, vocal-
ly. Casolla has a notable wobble in her voice, and, maybe
worst of all, looks matronly. Here, of course, we’re on tricky
territory, because this is opera. If you’re casting the role of a
drop-dead gorgeous princess in a movie, you start by elimi-
nating everyone who doesn’t look right. In an opera, you elim-
inate everyone who doesn’t sound right, which means the
looks are secondary.
1
Still, a matronly Turandot is a big prob-
lem, at least in close-ups. Why, after all, does Calaf take up her
challenge, risking his life and allowing the sacrifice of hapless
Liú? This really is a question we shouldn’t ask too strongly,
because the odds are that Puccini himself didn’t know. The
way I’ve spun the story – China, a kingdom in distress, itself
needing liberation from Turandot – is only hinted at in the
opera, carelessly, so we can’t really say that Calaf wants to
free the Chinese people. Instead, he seems besotted by Turan-
1 In fact, to digress briefly, it’s even worse than that. For some very diffi -
cult roles, the bottom line is to find someone who doesn’t sound absolutely
horrible; the parts are so hard to cast, in other words, that sounding good
might not even be a requirement. For what’s arguably the hardest opera
role of all, Siegfried in Wagner’s
Ring
, opera companies will even settle for
the lowest standard of all – someone who can hack his way through the
music without breaking down, e ven if he sounds raw and ugly.
