Puccini: Turandot (at the Forbidden City of Beijing). RCA
Victor Red Seal 74321-60917-2.
’m inclined to be kind to the lavish RCA
Turandot,
and not
just because – as I sample a smorgasbord of available big-
name classical DVDs, in this and a succeeding review – it’s
the only one seriously crafted for the medium. In fact, let’s give
it full credit. It’s the first major-label classical video planned
from the start as a DVD release, which means it’s full of DVD
candy: angles, audio, and subtitles in six languages, plus a
“making of” movie. No surround sound, but that, if you ask me,
means that RCA is being honest. There wasn’t surround sound
in the original, so they’re not going to fake it for DVD.
Still, none of this guarantees a worthwhile product. Some-
body, after all, had to be the first to release a serious classical
DVD, and now that it’s here, the most important question has
to be, “How good is it?” And here, I admit, I was skeptical.
Turandot
is one of those operas for huge voices, like Verdi’s
Aïda,
that don’t fare well in the current operatic climate.
What we handle easily these days are ensemble operas,
operas that require intelligent, educated singers who con-
tribute small fragments to a mosaic. But we struggle with
works that fail unless the cast (educated, thoughtful or not,
who cares?) floors its collective accelerator, vocally speaking,
and sings with the force of a top-of-the-line Corvette in heat. I
wrote about a cast like that in Verdi’s
La Forza del Destino
in
the first issue of this restored magazine. But that performance
was filmed in 1957. Now it’s 1999, and the Beijing
Turandot
doesn’t even feature the modern world’s most famous opera
stars. God, was I skeptical.
And my first look at the thing only fueled my doubts. I gave
myself a taste of the beginning, letting the opera play for 15
minutes or so. It’s a beautiful, distinctive, unusually artistic pro-
duction (no surprise, considering it’s directed by Zhang Yi m o u ,
C h i n a ’s leading film director, auteur of
The Story of Qiu Ju, To
Live,
and
Shanghai Tr i a d
)
,
but what was clear from the start
was that the most telling artistry comes from the staging, along
with costumes and Chinese dancers, all of which make a com-
pelling, even thoughtful frame for the opera, but don’t deliver
the heart of the performance. The singers
seemed blah; careful, reasonably sonorous,
but not possessed. At times I wouldn’t have sworn that they
even cared much about their work.
The hero of the opera, Calaf, an impetuous wandering
prince (with, ideally, a heroic tenor voice), has just encoun-
tered his blind exiled father, Ti m u r, on a crowded street in the
Forbidden City of Beijing (
Turandot,
of course, is an Italian set-
ting of a Chinese story, and the
shtick
of this production is that
i t ’s staged more or less exactly where the story is supposed to
take place). Ti m u r, blind and helpless, has been rescued and all
but adopted by Liú, one of those old-fashioned opera charac-
ters with a personality profile that can make a modern person
shiver with dismay; she’s a slave girl of unbounded, abject loy-
a l t y. Upon hearing all this, Calaf, the prince, is seized with grat-
itude, and tells Liú she’s blessed. But on screen, unfortunately,
we see not a real prince, or even a reasonable simulacrum, but
instead a boyish Russian tenor named Sergej (on the DVD box)
or Sergeij (on the DVD itself) Larin, and none of his fairytale
get-up (not even his long black barbarian’s ponytail) could stop
me from noticing that he sang his line with all the enthusiasm
of a man saying, “Yes, thanks for helping my dad, but now I’ve
got to watch the stock market report.”
Taking advantage of DVD technology, I
paged quickly forward to the opera’s most
Made for DVD
. . . . . . . . .
I
The first release of a serious
classical DVD, and the most
important question has to be:
“How good is it?”
G R E G S A N D O W
Zhang Yi m o u
