Puccini’s last, incomplete opera Turandot is a work that I usually find disgusting and boring, so much so that it is one of the very few repertoire works that I avoid seeing.
Puccini’s last, incomplete opera Turandot is a work that I usually find disgusting and boring, so much so that it is one of the very few repertoire works that I avoid seeing. However, having loathed Christopher Alden’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream so intensely a fortnight ago, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to see Turandot done by Welsh National Opera in his production of 1994, now revived, and I wasn’t disappointed: I found it disgusting and interesting.
Alden and Turandot are made for one another. It is updated, of course, and like Dream has an enclosing claustrophobic set, with costumes suggesting a totalitarian regime, though it is postmodern enough to include dilapidated emperors.
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