Fascinating video, sir. I have some words about the sopranos singing Turandot here because none of these exponents are true dramatic sopranos. What also hurts these sopranos the most is their lack of coordinated chest voice, which is necessary for great opera singing. After all, Turandot is truly for a dramatic soprano of Wagnerian dimensions who can combine the beefy chest tones of Amneris, Azucena, Carmen, and Eboli, the steely middle notes of Ortrud, Octavian, and Venus, and the blazing top notes of Brünnhilde, the Dyer's Wife, Elektra, Isolde, Leonore from Fidelio, and Salomé. Eva Marton was a natural spinto soprano who was a good Chrysothemis and Empress from the 1960s to the early 1980s. When she started singing more dramatic soprano roles like Turandot, Elektra, Brünnhilde, and Isolde, she sounded way more coreless and developed wobble upon wobble due to her unreliable technique. She did not possess a coordinated chest voice to make her Turandot a nuanced and fully realized character. Hence, her vocal flaws made her sound unpleasant to listen to. Sondra Radvanovsky, in her prime, was tolerable in dramatic coloratura roles. She showed promise as Antonia from Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Elena from Vespri Siciliani, Leonora from Trovatore, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, Elisabetta from Roberto Devereux, and Violetta from La Traviata, thanks to her always reliable top notes. She also sang both Mimi and Musetta from Boheme. In fact, her high notes are the ones that have been consistent throughout her career. However, her issues with inconsistent chest tones have always been evident in her tackling meatier spinto/dramatic soprano roles. She really should have remained in the dramatic coloratura and full lyric soprano repertoires, i.e., Luisa Miller, Mimi, Antonia, Leonora, Elena, Elvira from Ernani, and Cio-Cio-San. That is all! Tamara Wilson did have promise as a full lyric/spinto soprano. However, when she took on heavier dramatic soprano roles, she did not have sufficient power to carry herself through. There is no issue with singing Contessa Almaviva, Amelia Grimaldi, and Alice Ford for a long time as established roles in her repertoire. I would rather hear her in those roles than as Turandot and Isolde because she was rather mediocre in those more dramatic soprano roles. If she had remained as a full lyric soprano bordering on spinto, she would have been fine. Asmik Grigorian suffers the same issues as her Italianate predecessor Katia Ricciarelli. Grigorian, like Ricciarelli, is a natural lyric soprano who should never ever abuse her voice with more dramatic soprano roles. After all, she does possess a rather delicate timbre that is never meant to push heavier weights. I should know because I did like Asmik Grigorian as Tatyana from Tchaikovsky's Evgeny Onegin at the Komische Oper Berlin eight years ago. I also like her Jenufa because she also looked the part. Her Fedora was okay at best because she lacked the additional heft necessary for the role. Her Chrysothemis also lacked heft and incision. The fact that she took on Turandot was enough to shock me to my foundation! She is not a dramatic soprano at all, and she is asking for trouble by taking on roles like this and even Chrysothemis, Lady Macbeth, and Salome. I highly doubt that I have a prayer for Asmik Grigorian these days because listening to her Turandot is painful. Absolutely painful. She is sacrificing her naturally lovely lyric soprano voice for unnecessary forcing and yelling just to cope with Turandot's epic music! If I want real Turandots, I would rather stick with Bianca Scacciati, Gina Cigna, Anny Helm, Erna Schlüter, Gertrude Grob-Prandl, Birgit Nilsson, Inge Borkh, Ludmila Dvorakova, Amy Shuard, Morag Beaton, Anita Välkki, Ingrid Steger, Nadezda Kniplova, Danica Mastilovic, Gwyneth Jones, Grace Bumbry, Ghena Dimitrova, Ryszarda Racewicz, Giovanna Casolla, Gail Gilmore, and Gabriele Schnaut. This is especially true of those who possessed massively huge voices such as Schlüter, Grob-Prandl, Nilsson, Shuard, Välkki, Kniplova, and Mastilovic because they could naturally overpower the orchestra, which is necessary for singing Turandot's music.
Thank you for your comment and for watching the video. Clearly you know a lot about singing technique and about the history of singing. You are an opera singer yourself? Or a voice coach? And obviously you know a lot more about singing than I do! All I can say about opera singers is if they bring me as an audience joy and happiness, or not, when I watch and hear them perform. And all of the 4 sopranos in the Turandot examples gave everything they have for their audience - for me, for you, for all the other viewers. Of course we all like some singers more than others but my attitude towards their effort is first and foremost gratitude for sharing their extraordinary talent with someone like me who is so much less talented (or more precise: not talented at all when it comes to singing, unfortunately). Again thank you for your comment and all my best 🙏
@@peterpawlik2495 Always a pleasure, sir. I am a classically trained singer, a trained actor, someone who does some voice acting from time to time, a full-time Master's in American Studies student about to finish my studies, and a guy who mainly does music and media reviews on my RUclips channel. Furthermore, I am just somebody who has learned to listen to singers more objectively. Having individual tastes is indeed necessary. However, it is also important to listen to singers objectively to hear if they fulfill the vocal demands of something as dramatic and visceral as Turandot among other roles. At least I can see that you try to find the best in singers despite whatever vocal flaws they have. Once again, I am honored to have stopped by your video and said my two cents on this matter.
@@operaanimelover369 Thank you very much for your reply, I appreciate it a lot! And my guess that you know what you are talking about was spot-on. And congratulations to your impressive achievements!!! My approach to opera singers is a very different one from yours and therefore the conclusions we draw from our experiences have to be different as well, of course. At the Vienna State Opera, as assistant stage director, I worked with all the stars and later on in my work as a stage director I worked with hundreds of great singers who have not be as famous. And for over a decade I teach acting for students of opera singing at a music university here in Austria. I can say that I am in this business for almost 40 years. And from early on I witnessed the pressure, the stress, the anxiety, the humanity etc. of each and every singer, star or student. And I couldn't help to fall in love with those wonderful and so extraordinarily talented people. This clouds, I know, my impartial judgement. But I don't care 😄 If I witness a performance which is not to objectively great standards I might be a bit disappointed. But I still appreciate that they are trying to give us their best - good thing I am not a professional theater journalist 😂 Let me say after this horribly long message (and I apologize for it!) that I really appreciate the kind tone of your reply 🙏
I LOVE your channel! You say you are not a musician, but you have excellent insights. You’re clearly intelligent and you have a good sense of humor. You do make me giggle sometimes. Keep it up!!
Wow there is so much to comment on in this video. First let me say I absolutely LOVE your channel! I know it's a new channel so I hope you stick it out for a while so we can build up a large audience for you. I am new to opera but very passionate. Turandot is the first opera that I became obsessive about. It was the Placido Domingo/Eva Marton version in '88. I know Zeffirelli's directing is over the top but it's not fair to judge it on the video recorded footage. Because we're not seeing what the audience saw at the time. Having said that there are clearly excesses in the direction of the show. The dragon dancing in the beginning, the headsman waving his sword as dancers jump over his sword -- it looks like Cirque Du Soleil. But the rest of it is so grand and amazing. Calaf's stage direction in the scene where he hits the gong is amazing. I've seen several versions of this opera including older and newer versions. I keep coming back to the '88 version. Having said that the Wilson version is amazing! It's the only one here that I would make an effort to go see live. You can tell that each element of color in the lighting in the costumes is carefully selected. Stunning! Great show!
Thank you for your comment and especially for your encouraging words - it means a lot to me! You make a fair point: judging a production from one video excerpt alone is not really fair. And I commented the Met-Video a bit over-aggressively in order to make a point. Zeffirelli was a great director in his own way, always very traditional but always knowing what he was doing and being in complete command of the rehearsal process and how he wanted to tell a story - I respect that a lot! And I especially love Eva Marton: when I was a young assistant stage director at the Vienna State Opera, rehearsing Ballo in maschera with her and Renato Bruson and others, she defended me when during one of the rehearsals Ioan Holender (the director of the State Opera) came in and started to yell at me because he was under the impression I was not rehearsing efficiently enough. Eva Marton stood up and said: no, he is doing great! Probably I wasn't doing great (😂) but it was so sweet of her to come to my rescue
@@peterpawlik2495 wow cool story! Please do an episode and tell us about your experience in opera. I learned about the Vienna State Opera and Hollander from Elina Garanca's book. She had a lot to say about him! Apparently they had a big fallout. You should tell these stories on your RUclips channel! But seriously tell us about your career in opera. Don't you think we would enjoy stories about the opera singers you have met? Of course we would!!
@@mikewallace1270 It's true - some of the behind the scenes stories can be as entertaining as the actual story itself. And I had the pleasure of working with Pavarotti, Domingo, Carreras, Freni, Hampson, Shicoff etc. The only problem: Most of those really big stars have been so nice and decent in dealing with me when I was a young assistant stage director that I would feel uncomfortable telling personal or funny stories. I don't know... opera singers are very vulnerable and simply human, especially when they are about to perform (and to be judged by 2000 or more people). Assistant directors, together with the stage managers, their colleagues, the correpetitors etc. are part of an important support and trust system for those who have to do the heavy lifting every night... But I will think about it. And many thanks for suggesting this idea 😊🙏
@@peterpawlik2495 Peter, just tell us positive stories. Were opera fans, the highest of art forms. I'm sure when you started this channel that last thing you wanted to talk about was yourself lol. But, one video entitled "My experience in the opera world" would be of interest to us. You mentioned you were an assistant director. Well, that changes how I feel about your channel. You're someone who know what he is talking about! haha. Enjoy the channel very much.
The Vienna production is by far my favorite - not only of these 3 but of all Turandots I have ever seen. It remains a fairy tale but has a joyously happy ending that caused me to cry and laugh at the same time!
Wow. Can we get some praise for Asmik Grigorian? She's fantastic! Whenever I watch Turandot I do selective viewing of scenes and arias. I skip the Ping Pang Pong scene which adds little to the story. And skip the scene when the towns people are waiting for the moon to rise. There is a lot of extra fat in the libretto, imho. Operas are long enough! I won't recommend Der Rosenkavalier to my friends because it's 3.5 hours long despite it being FANTASTIC. You got me to watch all 43 mins of this video which means I LOVE your channel. Keep up the great work!
I am so happy I am not the only one who is not interested in the Ping-Pang-Pong story 😂 And about Grigorian: she is beyond outstanding. she is in my opinion a singular phenomenon. I made a whole video about her singing Tatyana's aria in concert - unfortunately it's an early video and in German 😬 Thank you for watching and for your support!
"What did the poet mean?" the school question (which I was afraid of🥺) later became a proverb, and today I could replace it with "What did the opera director want to say?" (luckily I'm not afraid of any more 😏). I watch opera when I want to relax, so the most important thing for me is the audiovisual impression. I look for answers to "difficult" questions in other places and at other times.🙂 Regarding your introduction about the development of art, you could have used opera too.🤔 P.S. I prefer modern directors because I find them interesting because of their innovation. Although I do not belong to the younger generation. 🙃
Thank you for your comment - I'm very happy to read that you no longer are afraid of the difficult questions in life like a poet's or a stage director's intentions 😄 And I especially appreciate your attitude to be open-minded and staying curious. Thank you so much for watching 😊
I think I personally preferred either the recent Vienna State Opera production or the car crash one the most. To somewhat respond to what commentor errollevine1746 has said, yes opera is an escapist fantasy but for me at least the escape doesn‘t so much need to spirit me away into a wholly different world, I want to escape into a world where suffering has a purpose, where sorrow can be beautiful and tragedy can be cathartic, if the production can convince me that this is possible in our world I am happy.
As always I am amazed by the way you put your thoughts into meaningful words - what you write about the purpose of theater: I might steal that and use it in one of my next videos. It's beautiful and touching, thank you! About the car crash: As I have said in the video - I like the idea. But after I have watched almost the whole opera (the link is in the description) it left me with a kind of strange aftertaste. I guess it is the stark contrast between this smart idea and the extremely conventional execution, in combination with the randomness of the costumes and styles and the kind of lazy way the director dealt with the chorus. It felt to me that he put them in funny costumes, thought that this is enough and then abandoned them. And that's hard to forgive for me. To summ it up: he had a great idea but not much beyond this one idea. Thats at least how I fell about it. On the other hand: not easy to make interesting theater if you have to deal with an un-charismatic singer/actor as Mr.Eyvazov...😬
Well some well grounded facts: 1. Eva Marton. A bit unfocused tone with a wobble that occured when she got famous in this role and unfortunately just grew over the years. 2. Sondra Radvanovsky. Always nasal and no chestvoice development. Moving on to Turandot is not a wise decision of hers just because she wants to continue her career. 3. Tamara Wilson. Not a dramatic soprano. Was maybe promising in some Verdi roles but deleloped a wobble and the party was over… 4. Asmik Grigorian. Regular lyric soprano. Nothing special at all but has incredibly enough made a career with a mediocre voice and in too heavy roles. (Amplification…)
Thank you for your comment. Which makes me a bit sad. Where does this need for such harsh and frankly mean criticism come from? Sure, some singers are better than others, that's normal. And it's okay to voice critique. But has it to be done in such an annihilating way?
I love the music and the singing and, personally, I don't mind the presentation, love all of them and, also, don't mind new and even weird stuff, if they keep the singing and the music.
Thank you for your comment! Although I find your comparison with Guernica funny it still is a different thing with theater/opera, in my opinion, since the latter is a kind of living and breathing thing interpreted by humans. And humans and how they define themselves have changed over the centuries. I am not a fan of the car crash either (more precise: I am disappointed what the stage director made of his idea...) but I find the idea to tell the story as a flashback happening in Calaf's and Turandot's mind while they are dying is sort of interesting.
🎹 The reality of opera is that the music Is so overwhelming, that it dissolves the critical faculty, i.e. a weak libretto. And nowhere is this more true than with the greatest musical discovery of my life... Richard Wagner. 🎹
Thank you for your comment! Yes, you are right, of course. Still, if I had to choose between a great opera with a great libretto and a great opera with a weak libretto I would choose the former 😄
The "why" was commercial success. This production was known as the best show "on Broadway" and when I tried to buy tickets, the only ones available were $180 each.
Thank you for your comment! Yeah, this production had an enormous success at its time. And I get why this is. But still, looking back with everything what happened on the stage (and in the world) since then in mind I can't help but find it very outdated - sorry 🤷♂️
Thank you very much for this compilation, it is very interesting to see and compare different interpretations of the same scene. The first is sumptuous, excessive. I suppose that live it would be impressive due to the size of the stage, the Met must be a very large theater, but seen on a small screen, so many people moving on stage distracted me from Eva Marton's performance. As for the costumes, those kinds of swords that surround Turandot's head and back remind me of the swords seen in the images of the Virgin of Sorrows, although I don't know if Zeffirelli's intention was to make a (remote) parallel. between the Virgin Mary and Turandot, the pure one. I can't comment on the second clip because I haven't understood anything, except that Mr. Eyvazov should go to singing lessons. The third has captivated me, I find it innovative, strangely hypnotic and despite the fact that the entire scene takes place practically static, it transmits great strength on the one hand due to Tamara Wilson's interpretation and on the other, due to the play of lights and the colors of the clothes. The last one gives me mixed feelings. I understand that surrendering to Calaf would be making Turandot's worst nightmare come true, hence the bed and the dolls that take out the box with the bones, which is a rather strange addition to the course of the scene. While I saw it I thought that it was a kind of psychoanalytic resource and you precisely explained the detail of the door to Freud's study. The images seen on the back wall seem to me to be of great visual strength. I don't quite understand what the three men surrounding Calaf, who seems quite blurred, mean, although I suppose it's because this is the time to focus attention on Turandot. Am I wrong or is there a great similarity between the characterization of Asmik Gregorin and Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons? I think that this performance and the previous one would give the audience a lot to reflect on. I apologize for this long comment and thank you very much again for your work.
Thank you for you fantastic comment - there is a lot to unpack 😄 I am sure you are right: due to the enormous proportions of the Met's stage Zeffirelli's set design, the costumes etc would have had quite the impact on the audience. And the small screen on a laptop might not do justice to that. Still: It's a very "old-fashioned" mindset behind all of this - the idea that an Italian director could recreate an authentic Chinese experience is what we call (in my opinion rightfully so) cultural appropriation nowadays and made me a bit uncomfortable watching... The problem with the second production was for me (besides Eyvazov's bad singing) that the world the director wanted to create didn't mean anything. Robert Wilson and Tamara Wilson? I agree 100% And the Vienna production? I almost fell out of my chair when I read your observation that Turandot looked liked a twin of Daenerys Targaryen - it is so obvious and yet I completely missed it 🤦♂I really loved the directing but the audience seemed to be less than happy with it - the clip with the boo-ing audience was from the opening night. But as I said when I was talking about the Naples production: emotions are good. Nothing worse than leaving a performance bored... See? I made you suffer for your long comment by replying equally long 😄🙏
Your comment made me realize my own feelings about staging. Whether it's modern or traditional it has to please the eye and look INTERESTING. After all, the stage is bigger than the singers and what we see most of for extended periods of time. Minimalist stages in opera to don't work for me
@@hummarstraful I agree with what you say about the need for opera/theater to be interesting. When the curtain opens for the first act and you see the set and think: "yeah, that looks exactly as I have thought it would look", well, that's not good 😄 Theater and opera have to move the audience, has to surprise and even challenge them. It has to have a meaning beyond looking pleasant. And that can be done in a traditional or modern way as long as it's done well and with purpose
In the second performance, the Gothic palace and the boat may refer to Venice, and the masks and costumes of the extras, to its famous Carnival. Although the story takes place in China, and there are many orientalizing elements in the music, opera Turandot is a typical product of European tradition and sung in Italian. Does that make sense somehow?
Thank you for your comment! I have no idea if your thoughts about this production are the ones the stage director and the set designer had in mind. You might be right, you might not be right. But in the end that's not what is important, I think. The beauty of art, may it be literature, dance, music or theater, is that it can mean different things to different people. I am not very fond of this production, as you know, but I love that it provokes us to think about it... Thank you for watching and for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it a lot!
I don't really mind the dancers... Considering that Calaf is not the first guy to court Turandot... "in questa reggia" could actually be even part of a ritual she recites to every suitor... And it has happened so many times that it is now a choreographed cultural exercise with dancers...
Thank you for your comment! You might be right about that. And if this is an annual (or even more frequent) event - it must be very expensive for the state to pay for a show as big: all the dancers, the priests, the security etc. These public tests of Turandot's suiters must be a real burden on a state's budget. Good old times when an emperor's daughter could simply demand and her demands were granted without discussion 😄
I haven't watched the entirety of this video and listened to all of your commentary (I plan to -- it's just a long video!). But just looking at the four productions you survey here, my immediate thought (I hope you don't mind) is that if a production is going to go modern, the more abstract, the better. And the more it relies on playing around with lighting, the better. I watched the Houston production (in a different city), and it was effective and beautiful in its own way. A similar approach was adopted, if memory serves me right, by Wieland Wagner at Bayreuth at the end of the war. (Obviously, the motivation there was to get away from German nationalism.) The problem with straying from being abstract is that you better be careful about what time period you 'relocate' the action too. Sometimes, it can work. But too often, the setting clashes with the music or is just ridiculous. I've seen Manon Lescaut at Covent Garden be reframed as an Anna Nicole Smith drama, and there was a lot of bright pink on set, and Manon was dressed as a stripper. I've also seen a debacle of an Aida production (with Radvanovsky, incidentally) where the triumphal scene became Aida's nightmare, where she was wearing a blue cleaning maid dress the entire time, and where Act III was in a gigantic storage room with an inflatable crocodile and a beach ball. There's a video on RUclips where Boheme is set in a space shuttle. And then there is this video of Turandot from Naples. All of these resettings are just wrong, and I don't think that an argument even needs to be made to justify this statement. Sometimes, a simple smell test will do. (I know for a fact that Radvanovsky strongly prefers traditional productions, so she couldn't have been happy singing with an upside-down car behind her! There's also a classic press conference from Lyric Opera Chicago -- must be available in the Lyric archives -- where she and her Amneris complain about that Aida production for a good five minutes.)
Thank you for your insightful comment! You are right: the problem with modern/more abstract interpretations of works like Turandot or Aida is to place it in the right context and setting. Being modern for modern's sake leads most of the time to embarrassing solutions. I am not always a fan of Robert Wilson's work but his style suited Turandot (or his famous Butterfly) perfectly. I am still happy that I have seen the Naples production. Often I learn more about what I want (or don't want) from a piece by watching a less satisfying production... 🤷♂
Like Mr. Wallace I like this channel and enjoy the videos. I agree with him also that the 1988 Zeffirelli production of Turandot is the one I will always remember. As an opera fan for more than seventy years, I have always found opera to be a form of escapism from a world filled with unpleasant situations. I don't need to attend an opera to see people on gurneys in emergency rooms after a motor vehicle accident as in the second Turandot illustrated in this video. I didn't like the other two either. Grand opera is not called "grand" for no reason at all. To me the spectacle of operas like Turandot and Aida is almost as important to the singing. I think the biggest mistake Mr. Gelb made in his terrific tenure at the Met was to abandon the Zeffirelli production of Tosca. Who can forget that great Act I at Sant' Andrea della Valle especialy when the replacement productions were uniformly dull and dreary and have had to be replaced quite rapidly?
A fan for more than 70 years??? I am beyond impressed!!! And thank you for taking your time not only to watch the video but also to comment - I appreciate it very much. Stage directing is a controversial issue. I recall still very vividly when I had to get a pork rib as a prop for one of my productions (don't ask 😄) and the only question the very lovely butcher had about this was: Will your show have nice costumes? Unfortunately that specific production was rather frugal costume-wise so he never showed up... In defense of "ambitious" stage directing: you have to keep in mind that you get the contract to direct an opera between 1 and 3 years in advance. And during this time directors live with the opera they are supposed to direct every day, thinking about it, reading about it, listening to it hundreds of hours, watching dozens of existing productions online, talking with colleagues and experts - at the end of this process naturally they are at a different level of being immersed in an opera than the typical audience is who comes to the opera maybe 10times a year (and I am optimistic here). The problem with that: stage directors sometimes forget that they are not performing for their peers but for an audience who, of course, has not took the same deep dive into the specific opera as they have taken. The art of directing is, I think, to be able to "translate" your thoughts and ideas gathered over 1 to 3 years in a manner that would allow the audience to follow you on your very individual path. It's not easy... Sorry for my long answer and thank you again for your thoughtful comment!
The Zeffirelli production is just that; a production. It is rich in detail, vibrant, and multilayered as a stage production should be for a nearly four thousand seat theater. This staging is transportative and true to the spirit of the original setting, not dully laborious in attempting to recreate an actual reality. This is what modern craptaculous productions, which are designed by lazy directors, are unable to do. No one should have to suffer thru the filth and wearisome "updated" poop which is ruining the operatic experience for so many today. The Met's new 'Carmen' and 'La Forza' are prime examples of what opera productions should not be: ugly, boring piles of crap littering the stage with the types and things one spends all of their days trying not to see. Imagine, if Hollywood and TV had had the bad ideas of producing "The Lord of the RIngs", "Downton Abbey" and "Game of Thrones" with "updated" settings populated with hideous modern day recreations of sets, tacky things , and ugly clothes straight of the rack at Target or some such place? They would be in bankruptcy now, sadly, like most opera companies are at the moment.
Thank you for your comment. I am sorry that you are disappointed and bitter in regard of the way operas are seen and interpreted today (and probably will be interpreted in the future as well). I am convinced that this "poop" and "filth" is the right way to keep opera alive for future generations.
I'm all for constant change. To illustrate the premise of your video, The Met premiered a new Forza del Destino on Monday night that got some rave reviews and a lot of negative, scathing reviews. (I'm going to see it next week). It's very au courant: Leonora, at the end of the production, is a homeless woman with a shopping cart in a post-apocalyptic NYC subway station. Two nights later, the Met revived the Old War Horse Turandot Zeffirelli production (the same one you show in your video) and apparently the audience was enraptured. Rave review in today's NY Times. Clearly, this is a complicated issue. Keep postulating more issues like this. Perhaps, at some point, you could do a comparison between Busoni's Turandot and Puccini's we -can all- sing -it in- our- sleep version.
I envy you for being able to see the Met's productions live...As you said: it's a complicated issue. I am suspecting that the whole thing might be a cultural thing as well? I remember vividly the reaction of some members of the audience when I did Ariadne auf Naxos in Philadelphia. Some of them were very unhappy about the fact that the Komponist was sung by a woman. And that this Komponist-woman had to flirt with Zerbinetta which made her in their eyes a lesbian... Anyway: Leonora as a homeless woman (and I love that you call this "au curant 😂) might be tough to swallow. Please let me know what your impression of this production is!
Yes, I think it's partly a cultural thing and a lack of sophistication. Very funny the story about the Ariadne production; by that token, all the pants roles in operas could be seen as lesbians in drag! The Met's new La Forza del Destino (perhaps, La Forza del Turntable) had some very spectacular singing and orchestral playing. I won't go into the staging, which has been very much discussed and dissed already. It, too, had stirring moments. For my taste, the most successful part of it was the pantomime that plays during the overture. Regards.@@peterpawlik2495
Any old style soprano would refuse to allow her difficult and show-stopping aria to be interrupted by ridiculous nonsense going on around her. Modern productions are killing opera as an art form.
First of all let me thank you for writing and sharing your thoughts 🙏 As you might imagine (if you have seen some of my former videos...) I am a huge proponent of modern productions. We both want the art form we love to have a great future. I am an old dude (turning 60 this year) so I am aware of the fact that my taste as a boomer might be very much vary from the taste of the younger generations. And I believe that those generations have the right to appreciate and hopefully even love opera according to their preference and taste which, I am quite sure, is very different from mine. Telling them that they should like opera productions the way we as older generation liked them doesn't seem to be a good strategy in my opinion. But of course all has to come down to quality: great singing in combination with great acting and intelligent/sophisticated/witty stage directing will win the day 🙂🙏
Wow! That's quite some challenge you've set us. Here are my thoughts from a complete ignoramus point of view. 1. Was it wash day at the court? Turandot is walking around with a drying rack on her head while her chorus accomplices waft sheets around to dry them! I don't like the fact that my attention went everywhere apart from the soprano. Mind you, any kind of set that has Placido Domingo on it is fine by me 😂 2. Oh now, that was just plain daft. I think the director of that must have been on something hallucinogenic. Perhaps the boats were to ferry them across the river Styx? We've gone from modern times to gothic. Why not throw in a bit of mythology to go it? 😂 3. Now I really like this. It gave me chance to listen properly to the aria and appreciate just how beautiful it is, I had missed this in the other two. But can someone please tell me what the heck the woman on the trapeze was all about? I think this is my favourite soprano of all the clips. She has a devine voice. 4. I have to be really careful here as my heart belongs to Jonas Kaufmann and I don't want to be biased. I am rather bewildered by this production. I like the fact that we can hear an uninterrupted aria by the soprano, who is also lovely. But I simply don't get the dolls, bones and the grim reaper lurking in the corner. lol I certainly prefer this version to the first two and, after listening to this version there is no doubt in my mind that Jonas Kaufmann is the best Calaf ever. So I would say I probably prefer version 3. Sorry for being so long-winded, but you did ask! I think you are brilliant and so love these opera ponder videos you produce. I really enjoyed this one ❤
I love your analysis! And your explanation for the boats in the second production? That might have very well been the idea of them, I missed that completely... I couldn't help but laugh about your "woman on the trapeze" sentence 😄 I am not sure but my suspicion is that this is not a woman but the Chinese emperor 😂 But I might be completely wrong about this but "the woman on the trapeze" definitely made my day. Although I am in complete awe of the Wilson production (and Tamara Wilson? What a voice!!!) I prefer version number 4 simply because it left me with so many questions and thoughts, really inspiring... And again: Thank you for your kind words 🙏
The woman on the trapeze? Well that is just typical of me, isn't it? lol I do apologise Emporer. That's a lovely frock you've got on. Note to self, get your glasses checked! 😀😀😀😀
Honestly, I would far rather watch Zeffirelli's production. At least it makes sense dramatically. And what's wrong with a bit of gratuitous OTT staging?
Zeffirelli's production of course makes sense. It's the kind of production where you lean back, bring out the popcorn and enjoy it without having to have a single thought of your own. And that can be great, I get that. We all have moments where we just want to turn off our brains and are just consuming. Nothing bad about that, i do it as well for example when i watch some sitcom on tv/Netflix. And do i enjoy the orchestra of the met, the fantastic chorus and the splendid singers? Yes, I do 🙂 But all productions are children of their time. And for me personally that means that i can watch productions from 30 or 60 years ago and enjoy them as an historic document. But for me the lack of intellectual curiosity displayed in this Zeffirelli Turandot is not what i am interested in theater/opera. 🤷♂️
The Mets Zeffirelli production is the best Turandot in my opinion the best ever done. I’ve seen this product many times and never get tired of it. You ask why? My answer is why not. We as opera goers go to the theater to be wowed by the music, singing and what we see onstage. Zeffirelli in my opinion was the best in stage design. Present day productions in my opinion are for the most part horrible. Empty stages,updated modern dress. Totally taken out of context. Many designers and directors has no respect for the composers. The Sondra Radvanofsky production was one of the ugliest things I’ve seen. I would have walked out. I’m afraid to attend operas anymore because I’m afraid of what I’m going to see onstage. The Houston Grand Operas staging was not bad. It was a no frills staging.. the Vienna staging was a horrible disaster. You may disagree with me on everything I said , but that ok, we have different tastes.
Sorry for my late reply - yes, I disagree but that's, as you said, okay 🙂👍 Of course Zefirelli was a hugely important player from the 50s onwards and he did a lot of great work removing the dust and trying to make the human drama more relatable. But this Turandot? I don't know...It's like having an already heavy chocolate cake and then adding some extra thick frosting and then some marzipan toppings and sugar flowers and whipped cream - its so much that in the end one forgets how the actual cake tastes. I know this is a botched analogy but I do the best I can 😄 But we find common ground again in our dislike of the Naples production 🙏
The problem I have with his argument is he sees this operas as significant pieces of dramatic theatre. Film has reinvented itself, but doesn’t tell the same stories now as it did 100 years ago. Very few plays of the 18th/19th century still survive today. But opera is stuck in pieces over a century old. As you saw with film, dramatic sensibilities of the 1920s aren’t relevant today, so why should we be suffering through a bastardisation of the music of that same period? Let’s compose new stuff and try to enjoy new sounds and subjects in opera. You can set Turandot in a Vietnamese software factory and the libretto and music will still be 1920s Italy, be old fashioned and have little relevance to today.
Thank you for your comment! You make a very good point about the lack of newly composed operas with contemporary topics. And I tried to emphasize this in my video about Nixon in China... Where I disagree is your assessment about the relevance of the classic dramas/operas from the 18th and 19th century. The top 100 (random number...) of them are still played all the time because they tell us universal and timeless stories and truths about ourselves, be it the Ancient Greek dramas or Shakespeare, Schiller, Strindberg etc. The solution couldn't be in my opinion to get rid of them but to supplement them with new dramas and operas.
@@peterpawlik2495 I live in the UK and the majority of the theatre experience enjoyed here is commercial. Again. Shakespeare is rarely performed outside of the RSC and the Globe, because the language is so convoluted and nearly incomprehensible to most theatrical goers, never mind the general public. I love Kabale und Lieber and Don Carlos, but they are never performed and the rest of Schillers plays are unheard of. I would say the oldest play writes still commercially viable in the UK are Oscar Wilde and maybe Noel Coward. Public theatre, or state funded theatre, would have more Strindbergs, Chekhov’s, Ibsen etc, but that’s because they have educational value as part of the western canon. I think that’s the important factor of this is Canonical works and their relevance. I’m not sure that these plays are relevant to younger generations and they’re increasingly becoming problematic for the political/ racial/ gender issues they espouse. There’s only so much you can do with Turandot before you realise embedded in the score is orientalism, there’s only so much you can do with Wagner before you see the infantilisation of his women is rooted in sexism.
@@peteradaniel You are right - I was talking with my upbringing in Germany and Austria as background. Here the idea of theater having an educational component to it is still very alive. I was aware of the commercial based philosophy of the British and American theater system (private sponsorships etc) but failed to think of it when I wrote my answer to your comment. And you make a very good point when talking about the embedded orientalism and/or sexism in some (actually: many) of the canonical works. That's one reason why I liked the Vienna production so much. It didn't focus on the empty pomp often associated with Turandot but instead tried to do some digging into why Turandot reacts the way she does. Obviously there is something in her very own personal past (and not just in Lou-Ling's) which triggered this extreme reaction to being suited by a man... Anyway, it is clear to me as well that the only longtime solution for opera must be to perform contemporary and new operas with new and relevant stories. There is so much to say about that but my answer is already too long, sorry for that.
Radvanosky, Wilson and Grigorian are not Turandots! If you want to hear real Turandot's you have to go back in time Anee Roselle, Eva Turner, Nilsson ext. ext.
Fascinating video, sir. I have some words about the sopranos singing Turandot here because none of these exponents are true dramatic sopranos. What also hurts these sopranos the most is their lack of coordinated chest voice, which is necessary for great opera singing. After all, Turandot is truly for a dramatic soprano of Wagnerian dimensions who can combine the beefy chest tones of Amneris, Azucena, Carmen, and Eboli, the steely middle notes of Ortrud, Octavian, and Venus, and the blazing top notes of Brünnhilde, the Dyer's Wife, Elektra, Isolde, Leonore from Fidelio, and Salomé.
Eva Marton was a natural spinto soprano who was a good Chrysothemis and Empress from the 1960s to the early 1980s. When she started singing more dramatic soprano roles like Turandot, Elektra, Brünnhilde, and Isolde, she sounded way more coreless and developed wobble upon wobble due to her unreliable technique. She did not possess a coordinated chest voice to make her Turandot a nuanced and fully realized character. Hence, her vocal flaws made her sound unpleasant to listen to.
Sondra Radvanovsky, in her prime, was tolerable in dramatic coloratura roles. She showed promise as Antonia from Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Elena from Vespri Siciliani, Leonora from Trovatore, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, Elisabetta from Roberto Devereux, and Violetta from La Traviata, thanks to her always reliable top notes. She also sang both Mimi and Musetta from Boheme. In fact, her high notes are the ones that have been consistent throughout her career. However, her issues with inconsistent chest tones have always been evident in her tackling meatier spinto/dramatic soprano roles. She really should have remained in the dramatic coloratura and full lyric soprano repertoires, i.e., Luisa Miller, Mimi, Antonia, Leonora, Elena, Elvira from Ernani, and Cio-Cio-San. That is all!
Tamara Wilson did have promise as a full lyric/spinto soprano. However, when she took on heavier dramatic soprano roles, she did not have sufficient power to carry herself through. There is no issue with singing Contessa Almaviva, Amelia Grimaldi, and Alice Ford for a long time as established roles in her repertoire. I would rather hear her in those roles than as Turandot and Isolde because she was rather mediocre in those more dramatic soprano roles. If she had remained as a full lyric soprano bordering on spinto, she would have been fine.
Asmik Grigorian suffers the same issues as her Italianate predecessor Katia Ricciarelli. Grigorian, like Ricciarelli, is a natural lyric soprano who should never ever abuse her voice with more dramatic soprano roles. After all, she does possess a rather delicate timbre that is never meant to push heavier weights. I should know because I did like Asmik Grigorian as Tatyana from Tchaikovsky's Evgeny Onegin at the Komische Oper Berlin eight years ago. I also like her Jenufa because she also looked the part. Her Fedora was okay at best because she lacked the additional heft necessary for the role. Her Chrysothemis also lacked heft and incision. The fact that she took on Turandot was enough to shock me to my foundation! She is not a dramatic soprano at all, and she is asking for trouble by taking on roles like this and even Chrysothemis, Lady Macbeth, and Salome. I highly doubt that I have a prayer for Asmik Grigorian these days because listening to her Turandot is painful. Absolutely painful. She is sacrificing her naturally lovely lyric soprano voice for unnecessary forcing and yelling just to cope with Turandot's epic music!
If I want real Turandots, I would rather stick with Bianca Scacciati, Gina Cigna, Anny Helm, Erna Schlüter, Gertrude Grob-Prandl, Birgit Nilsson, Inge Borkh, Ludmila Dvorakova, Amy Shuard, Morag Beaton, Anita Välkki, Ingrid Steger, Nadezda Kniplova, Danica Mastilovic, Gwyneth Jones, Grace Bumbry, Ghena Dimitrova, Ryszarda Racewicz, Giovanna Casolla, Gail Gilmore, and Gabriele Schnaut. This is especially true of those who possessed massively huge voices such as Schlüter, Grob-Prandl, Nilsson, Shuard, Välkki, Kniplova, and Mastilovic because they could naturally overpower the orchestra, which is necessary for singing Turandot's music.
Thank you for your comment and for watching the video. Clearly you know a lot about singing technique and about the history of singing. You are an opera singer yourself? Or a voice coach? And obviously you know a lot more about singing than I do! All I can say about opera singers is if they bring me as an audience joy and happiness, or not, when I watch and hear them perform. And all of the 4 sopranos in the Turandot examples gave everything they have for their audience - for me, for you, for all the other viewers. Of course we all like some singers more than others but my attitude towards their effort is first and foremost gratitude for sharing their extraordinary talent with someone like me who is so much less talented (or more precise: not talented at all when it comes to singing, unfortunately).
Again thank you for your comment and all my best 🙏
@@peterpawlik2495 Always a pleasure, sir. I am a classically trained singer, a trained actor, someone who does some voice acting from time to time, a full-time Master's in American Studies student about to finish my studies, and a guy who mainly does music and media reviews on my RUclips channel. Furthermore, I am just somebody who has learned to listen to singers more objectively. Having individual tastes is indeed necessary. However, it is also important to listen to singers objectively to hear if they fulfill the vocal demands of something as dramatic and visceral as Turandot among other roles. At least I can see that you try to find the best in singers despite whatever vocal flaws they have. Once again, I am honored to have stopped by your video and said my two cents on this matter.
@@operaanimelover369 Thank you very much for your reply, I appreciate it a lot! And my guess that you know what you are talking about was spot-on. And congratulations to your impressive achievements!!!
My approach to opera singers is a very different one from yours and therefore the conclusions we draw from our experiences have to be different as well, of course. At the Vienna State Opera, as assistant stage director, I worked with all the stars and later on in my work as a stage director I worked with hundreds of great singers who have not be as famous. And for over a decade I teach acting for students of opera singing at a music university here in Austria. I can say that I am in this business for almost 40 years. And from early on I witnessed the pressure, the stress, the anxiety, the humanity etc. of each and every singer, star or student. And I couldn't help to fall in love with those wonderful and so extraordinarily talented people. This clouds, I know, my impartial judgement. But I don't care 😄 If I witness a performance which is not to objectively great standards I might be a bit disappointed. But I still appreciate that they are trying to give us their best - good thing I am not a professional theater journalist 😂
Let me say after this horribly long message (and I apologize for it!) that I really appreciate the kind tone of your reply 🙏
@@operaanimelover369
I have no education whatsoever, still I know female operavoices better than most.
It’s about one’s ears, not my singing voice…
@@draganvidic2039 That's true. It's also about listening objectively.
I LOVE your channel! You say you are not a musician, but you have excellent insights. You’re clearly intelligent and you have a good sense of humor. You do make me giggle sometimes. Keep it up!!
Thank you very much for your kind and encouraging words - I do appreciate it very much 🙂🙏
Agreed 😊
Wow there is so much to comment on in this video. First let me say I absolutely LOVE your channel! I know it's a new channel so I hope you stick it out for a while so we can build up a large audience for you. I am new to opera but very passionate. Turandot is the first opera that I became obsessive about. It was the Placido Domingo/Eva Marton version in '88. I know Zeffirelli's directing is over the top but it's not fair to judge it on the video recorded footage. Because we're not seeing what the audience saw at the time. Having said that there are clearly excesses in the direction of the show. The dragon dancing in the beginning, the headsman waving his sword as dancers jump over his sword -- it looks like Cirque Du Soleil. But the rest of it is so grand and amazing. Calaf's stage direction in the scene where he hits the gong is amazing. I've seen several versions of this opera including older and newer versions. I keep coming back to the '88 version. Having said that the Wilson version is amazing! It's the only one here that I would make an effort to go see live. You can tell that each element of color in the lighting in the costumes is carefully selected. Stunning! Great show!
Thank you for your comment and especially for your encouraging words - it means a lot to me!
You make a fair point: judging a production from one video excerpt alone is not really fair. And I commented the Met-Video a bit over-aggressively in order to make a point. Zeffirelli was a great director in his own way, always very traditional but always knowing what he was doing and being in complete command of the rehearsal process and how he wanted to tell a story - I respect that a lot!
And I especially love Eva Marton: when I was a young assistant stage director at the Vienna State Opera, rehearsing Ballo in maschera with her and Renato Bruson and others, she defended me when during one of the rehearsals Ioan Holender (the director of the State Opera) came in and started to yell at me because he was under the impression I was not rehearsing efficiently enough. Eva Marton stood up and said: no, he is doing great! Probably I wasn't doing great (😂) but it was so sweet of her to come to my rescue
@@peterpawlik2495 wow cool story! Please do an episode and tell us about your experience in opera. I learned about the Vienna State Opera and Hollander from Elina Garanca's book. She had a lot to say about him! Apparently they had a big fallout. You should tell these stories on your RUclips channel! But seriously tell us about your career in opera. Don't you think we would enjoy stories about the opera singers you have met? Of course we would!!
@@mikewallace1270 It's true - some of the behind the scenes stories can be as entertaining as the actual story itself. And I had the pleasure of working with Pavarotti, Domingo, Carreras, Freni, Hampson, Shicoff etc. The only problem: Most of those really big stars have been so nice and decent in dealing with me when I was a young assistant stage director that I would feel uncomfortable telling personal or funny stories. I don't know... opera singers are very vulnerable and simply human, especially when they are about to perform (and to be judged by 2000 or more people). Assistant directors, together with the stage managers, their colleagues, the correpetitors etc. are part of an important support and trust system for those who have to do the heavy lifting every night... But I will think about it. And many thanks for suggesting this idea 😊🙏
@@peterpawlik2495 Peter, just tell us positive stories. Were opera fans, the highest of art forms. I'm sure when you started this channel that last thing you wanted to talk about was yourself lol. But, one video entitled "My experience in the opera world" would be of interest to us. You mentioned you were an assistant director. Well, that changes how I feel about your channel. You're someone who know what he is talking about! haha. Enjoy the channel very much.
@@hummarstraful Thank you for your encouraging words. And I will think about yours and Mr.Wallace's suggestion...
The Vienna production is by far my favorite - not only of these 3 but of all Turandots I have ever seen. It remains a fairy tale but has a joyously happy ending that caused me to cry and laugh at the same time!
It's my favorite as well 😊
Wow. Can we get some praise for Asmik Grigorian? She's fantastic! Whenever I watch Turandot I do selective viewing of scenes and arias. I skip the Ping Pang Pong scene which adds little to the story. And skip the scene when the towns people are waiting for the moon to rise. There is a lot of extra fat in the libretto, imho. Operas are long enough! I won't recommend Der Rosenkavalier to my friends because it's 3.5 hours long despite it being FANTASTIC. You got me to watch all 43 mins of this video which means I LOVE your channel. Keep up the great work!
I am so happy I am not the only one who is not interested in the Ping-Pang-Pong story 😂
And about Grigorian: she is beyond outstanding. she is in my opinion a singular phenomenon. I made a whole video about her singing Tatyana's aria in concert - unfortunately it's an early video and in German 😬
Thank you for watching and for your support!
No Grigorian is a disaster…
"What did the poet mean?" the school question (which I was afraid of🥺) later became a proverb, and today I could replace it with "What did the opera director want to say?" (luckily I'm not afraid of any more 😏). I watch opera when I want to relax, so the most important thing for me is the audiovisual impression. I look for answers to "difficult" questions in other places and at other times.🙂
Regarding your introduction about the development of art, you could have used opera too.🤔
P.S. I prefer modern directors because I find them interesting because of their innovation. Although I do not belong to the younger generation. 🙃
Thank you for your comment - I'm very happy to read that you no longer are afraid of the difficult questions in life like a poet's or a stage director's intentions 😄 And I especially appreciate your attitude to be open-minded and staying curious.
Thank you so much for watching 😊
I think I personally preferred either the recent Vienna State Opera production or the car crash one the most. To somewhat respond to what commentor errollevine1746 has said, yes opera is an escapist fantasy but for me at least the escape doesn‘t so much need to spirit me away into a wholly different world, I want to escape into a world where suffering has a purpose, where sorrow can be beautiful and tragedy can be cathartic, if the production can convince me that this is possible in our world I am happy.
As always I am amazed by the way you put your thoughts into meaningful words - what you write about the purpose of theater: I might steal that and use it in one of my next videos. It's beautiful and touching, thank you!
About the car crash: As I have said in the video - I like the idea. But after I have watched almost the whole opera (the link is in the description) it left me with a kind of strange aftertaste. I guess it is the stark contrast between this smart idea and the extremely conventional execution, in combination with the randomness of the costumes and styles and the kind of lazy way the director dealt with the chorus. It felt to me that he put them in funny costumes, thought that this is enough and then abandoned them. And that's hard to forgive for me. To summ it up: he had a great idea but not much beyond this one idea. Thats at least how I fell about it. On the other hand: not easy to make interesting theater if you have to deal with an un-charismatic singer/actor as Mr.Eyvazov...😬
Well some well grounded facts:
1. Eva Marton.
A bit unfocused tone with a wobble that occured when she got famous in this role and unfortunately just grew over the years.
2. Sondra Radvanovsky.
Always nasal and no chestvoice development. Moving on to Turandot is not a wise decision of hers just because she wants to continue her career.
3. Tamara Wilson.
Not a dramatic soprano. Was maybe promising in some Verdi roles but deleloped a wobble and the party was over…
4. Asmik Grigorian.
Regular lyric soprano. Nothing special at all but has incredibly enough made a career with a mediocre voice and in too heavy roles.
(Amplification…)
Good singers don’t need these crap productions with extra (DISTRACTION) on the stage…
Thank you for your comment. Which makes me a bit sad. Where does this need for such harsh and frankly mean criticism come from? Sure, some singers are better than others, that's normal. And it's okay to voice critique. But has it to be done in such an annihilating way?
I love the music and the singing and, personally, I don't mind the presentation, love all of them and, also, don't mind new and even weird stuff, if they keep the singing and the music.
Should someone go and paint over a Picasso? Tell s different story over that of the Guernica? I understand updating and reinventing, but a car crash?
Thank you for your comment! Although I find your comparison with Guernica funny it still is a different thing with theater/opera, in my opinion, since the latter is a kind of living and breathing thing interpreted by humans. And humans and how they define themselves have changed over the centuries. I am not a fan of the car crash either (more precise: I am disappointed what the stage director made of his idea...) but I find the idea to tell the story as a flashback happening in Calaf's and Turandot's mind while they are dying is sort of interesting.
🎹 The reality of opera is that the music Is so overwhelming, that it dissolves the critical faculty, i.e. a weak libretto. And nowhere is this more true than with the greatest musical discovery of my life... Richard Wagner. 🎹
Thank you for your comment! Yes, you are right, of course. Still, if I had to choose between a great opera with a great libretto and a great opera with a weak libretto I would choose the former 😄
The "why" was commercial success. This production was known as the best show "on Broadway" and when I tried to buy tickets, the only ones available were $180 each.
Thank you for your comment! Yeah, this production had an enormous success at its time. And I get why this is. But still, looking back with everything what happened on the stage (and in the world) since then in mind I can't help but find it very outdated - sorry 🤷♂️
Thank you very much for this compilation, it is very interesting to see and compare different interpretations of the same scene. The first is sumptuous, excessive. I suppose that live it would be impressive due to the size of the stage, the Met must be a very large theater, but seen on a small screen, so many people moving on stage distracted me from Eva Marton's performance. As for the costumes, those kinds of swords that surround Turandot's head and back remind me of the swords seen in the images of the Virgin of Sorrows, although I don't know if Zeffirelli's intention was to make a (remote) parallel. between the Virgin Mary and Turandot, the pure one.
I can't comment on the second clip because I haven't understood anything, except that Mr. Eyvazov should go to singing lessons.
The third has captivated me, I find it innovative, strangely hypnotic and despite the fact that the entire scene takes place practically static, it transmits great strength on the one hand due to Tamara Wilson's interpretation and on the other, due to the play of lights and the colors of the clothes.
The last one gives me mixed feelings. I understand that surrendering to Calaf would be making Turandot's worst nightmare come true, hence the bed and the dolls that take out the box with the bones, which is a rather strange addition to the course of the scene. While I saw it I thought that it was a kind of psychoanalytic resource and you precisely explained the detail of the door to Freud's study. The images seen on the back wall seem to me to be of great visual strength. I don't quite understand what the three men surrounding Calaf, who seems quite blurred, mean, although I suppose it's because this is the time to focus attention on Turandot. Am I wrong or is there a great similarity between the characterization of Asmik Gregorin and Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons? I think that this performance and the previous one would give the audience a lot to reflect on.
I apologize for this long comment and thank you very much again for your work.
Thank you for you fantastic comment - there is a lot to unpack 😄
I am sure you are right: due to the enormous proportions of the Met's stage Zeffirelli's set design, the costumes etc would have had quite the impact on the audience. And the small screen on a laptop might not do justice to that. Still: It's a very "old-fashioned" mindset behind all of this - the idea that an Italian director could recreate an authentic Chinese experience is what we call (in my opinion rightfully so) cultural appropriation nowadays and made me a bit uncomfortable watching...
The problem with the second production was for me (besides Eyvazov's bad singing) that the world the director wanted to create didn't mean anything.
Robert Wilson and Tamara Wilson? I agree 100%
And the Vienna production? I almost fell out of my chair when I read your observation that Turandot looked liked a twin of Daenerys Targaryen - it is so obvious and yet I completely missed it 🤦♂I really loved the directing but the audience seemed to be less than happy with it - the clip with the boo-ing audience was from the opening night. But as I said when I was talking about the Naples production: emotions are good. Nothing worse than leaving a performance bored...
See? I made you suffer for your long comment by replying equally long 😄🙏
Your comment made me realize my own feelings about staging. Whether it's modern or traditional it has to please the eye and look INTERESTING. After all, the stage is bigger than the singers and what we see most of for extended periods of time. Minimalist stages in opera to don't work for me
@@hummarstraful I agree with what you say about the need for opera/theater to be interesting. When the curtain opens for the first act and you see the set and think: "yeah, that looks exactly as I have thought it would look", well, that's not good 😄 Theater and opera have to move the audience, has to surprise and even challenge them. It has to have a meaning beyond looking pleasant. And that can be done in a traditional or modern way as long as it's done well and with purpose
In the second performance, the Gothic palace and the boat may refer to Venice, and the masks and costumes of the extras, to its famous Carnival. Although the story takes place in China, and there are many orientalizing elements in the music, opera Turandot is a typical product of European tradition and sung in Italian. Does that make sense somehow?
Thank you for your comment! I have no idea if your thoughts about this production are the ones the stage director and the set designer had in mind. You might be right, you might not be right. But in the end that's not what is important, I think. The beauty of art, may it be literature, dance, music or theater, is that it can mean different things to different people. I am not very fond of this production, as you know, but I love that it provokes us to think about it...
Thank you for watching and for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it a lot!
I don't really mind the dancers... Considering that Calaf is not the first guy to court Turandot... "in questa reggia" could actually be even part of a ritual she recites to every suitor... And it has happened so many times that it is now a choreographed cultural exercise with dancers...
Thank you for your comment! You might be right about that. And if this is an annual (or even more frequent) event - it must be very expensive for the state to pay for a show as big: all the dancers, the priests, the security etc. These public tests of Turandot's suiters must be a real burden on a state's budget. Good old times when an emperor's daughter could simply demand and her demands were granted without discussion 😄
I haven't watched the entirety of this video and listened to all of your commentary (I plan to -- it's just a long video!). But just looking at the four productions you survey here, my immediate thought (I hope you don't mind) is that if a production is going to go modern, the more abstract, the better. And the more it relies on playing around with lighting, the better. I watched the Houston production (in a different city), and it was effective and beautiful in its own way. A similar approach was adopted, if memory serves me right, by Wieland Wagner at Bayreuth at the end of the war. (Obviously, the motivation there was to get away from German nationalism.) The problem with straying from being abstract is that you better be careful about what time period you 'relocate' the action too. Sometimes, it can work. But too often, the setting clashes with the music or is just ridiculous. I've seen Manon Lescaut at Covent Garden be reframed as an Anna Nicole Smith drama, and there was a lot of bright pink on set, and Manon was dressed as a stripper. I've also seen a debacle of an Aida production (with Radvanovsky, incidentally) where the triumphal scene became Aida's nightmare, where she was wearing a blue cleaning maid dress the entire time, and where Act III was in a gigantic storage room with an inflatable crocodile and a beach ball. There's a video on RUclips where Boheme is set in a space shuttle. And then there is this video of Turandot from Naples. All of these resettings are just wrong, and I don't think that an argument even needs to be made to justify this statement. Sometimes, a simple smell test will do. (I know for a fact that Radvanovsky strongly prefers traditional productions, so she couldn't have been happy singing with an upside-down car behind her! There's also a classic press conference from Lyric Opera Chicago -- must be available in the Lyric archives -- where she and her Amneris complain about that Aida production for a good five minutes.)
Thank you for your insightful comment! You are right: the problem with modern/more abstract interpretations of works like Turandot or Aida is to place it in the right context and setting. Being modern for modern's sake leads most of the time to embarrassing solutions. I am not always a fan of Robert Wilson's work but his style suited Turandot (or his famous Butterfly) perfectly.
I am still happy that I have seen the Naples production. Often I learn more about what I want (or don't want) from a piece by watching a less satisfying production... 🤷♂
Like Mr. Wallace I like this channel and enjoy the videos. I agree with him also that the 1988 Zeffirelli production of Turandot is the one I will always remember. As an opera fan for more than seventy years, I have always found opera to be a form of escapism from a world filled with unpleasant situations. I don't need to attend an opera to see people on gurneys in emergency rooms after a motor vehicle accident as in the second Turandot illustrated in this video. I didn't like the other two either. Grand opera is not called "grand" for no reason at all. To me the spectacle of operas like Turandot and Aida is almost as important to the singing. I think the biggest mistake Mr. Gelb made in his terrific tenure at the Met was to abandon the Zeffirelli production of Tosca. Who can forget that great Act I at Sant' Andrea della Valle especialy when the replacement productions were uniformly dull and dreary and have had to be replaced quite rapidly?
I just checked and Met On Demand has the Zeffirelli version of Tosca from 1985 with Placido Domingo. That's my next viewing!
A fan for more than 70 years??? I am beyond impressed!!! And thank you for taking your time not only to watch the video but also to comment - I appreciate it very much.
Stage directing is a controversial issue. I recall still very vividly when I had to get a pork rib as a prop for one of my productions (don't ask 😄) and the only question the very lovely butcher had about this was: Will your show have nice costumes? Unfortunately that specific production was rather frugal costume-wise so he never showed up...
In defense of "ambitious" stage directing: you have to keep in mind that you get the contract to direct an opera between 1 and 3 years in advance. And during this time directors live with the opera they are supposed to direct every day, thinking about it, reading about it, listening to it hundreds of hours, watching dozens of existing productions online, talking with colleagues and experts - at the end of this process naturally they are at a different level of being immersed in an opera than the typical audience is who comes to the opera maybe 10times a year (and I am optimistic here). The problem with that: stage directors sometimes forget that they are not performing for their peers but for an audience who, of course, has not took the same deep dive into the specific opera as they have taken. The art of directing is, I think, to be able to "translate" your thoughts and ideas gathered over 1 to 3 years in a manner that would allow the audience to follow you on your very individual path. It's not easy...
Sorry for my long answer and thank you again for your thoughtful comment!
@@mikewallace1270 Enjoy 😊
@@peterpawlik2495 sounds like an episode idea!
@@mikewallace1270 I guess most of my viewers would prefer less talk and more music 😄
The Zeffirelli production is just that; a production. It is rich in detail, vibrant, and multilayered as a stage production should be for a nearly four thousand seat theater. This staging is transportative and true to the spirit of the original setting, not dully laborious in attempting to recreate an actual reality. This is what modern craptaculous productions, which are designed by lazy directors, are unable to do. No one should have to suffer thru the filth and wearisome "updated" poop which is ruining the operatic experience for so many today. The Met's new 'Carmen' and 'La Forza' are prime examples of what opera productions should not be: ugly, boring piles of crap littering the stage with the types and things one spends all of their days trying not to see. Imagine, if Hollywood and TV had had the bad ideas of producing "The Lord of the RIngs", "Downton Abbey" and "Game of Thrones" with "updated" settings populated with hideous modern day recreations of sets, tacky things , and ugly clothes straight of the rack at Target or some such place? They would be in bankruptcy now, sadly, like most opera companies are at the moment.
Thank you for your comment. I am sorry that you are disappointed and bitter in regard of the way operas are seen and interpreted today (and probably will be interpreted in the future as well). I am convinced that this "poop" and "filth" is the right way to keep opera alive for future generations.
I'm all for constant change. To illustrate the premise of your video, The Met premiered a new Forza del Destino on Monday night that got some rave reviews and a lot of negative, scathing reviews. (I'm going to see it next week). It's very au courant: Leonora, at the end of the production, is a homeless woman with a shopping cart in a post-apocalyptic NYC subway station.
Two nights later, the Met revived the Old War Horse Turandot Zeffirelli production (the same one you show in your video) and apparently the audience was enraptured. Rave review in today's NY Times.
Clearly, this is a complicated issue. Keep postulating more issues like this. Perhaps, at some point, you could do a comparison between Busoni's Turandot and Puccini's we -can all- sing -it in- our- sleep version.
I envy you for being able to see the Met's productions live...As you said: it's a complicated issue.
I am suspecting that the whole thing might be a cultural thing as well? I remember vividly the reaction of some members of the audience when I did Ariadne auf Naxos in Philadelphia. Some of them were very unhappy about the fact that the Komponist was sung by a woman. And that this Komponist-woman had to flirt with Zerbinetta which made her in their eyes a lesbian...
Anyway: Leonora as a homeless woman (and I love that you call this "au curant 😂) might be tough to swallow. Please let me know what your impression of this production is!
Yes, I think it's partly a cultural thing and a lack of sophistication. Very funny the story about the Ariadne production; by that token, all the pants roles in operas could be seen as lesbians in drag!
The Met's new La Forza del Destino (perhaps, La Forza del Turntable) had some very spectacular singing and orchestral playing. I won't go into the staging, which has been very much discussed and dissed already. It, too, had stirring moments. For my taste, the most successful part of it was the pantomime that plays during the overture. Regards.@@peterpawlik2495
Any old style soprano would refuse to allow her difficult and show-stopping aria to be interrupted by ridiculous nonsense going on around her. Modern productions are killing opera as an art form.
First of all let me thank you for writing and sharing your thoughts 🙏 As you might imagine (if you have seen some of my former videos...) I am a huge proponent of modern productions. We both want the art form we love to have a great future. I am an old dude (turning 60 this year) so I am aware of the fact that my taste as a boomer might be very much vary from the taste of the younger generations. And I believe that those generations have the right to appreciate and hopefully even love opera according to their preference and taste which, I am quite sure, is very different from mine. Telling them that they should like opera productions the way we as older generation liked them doesn't seem to be a good strategy in my opinion. But of course all has to come down to quality: great singing in combination with great acting and intelligent/sophisticated/witty stage directing will win the day 🙂🙏
Wow! That's quite some challenge you've set us. Here are my thoughts from a complete ignoramus point of view.
1. Was it wash day at the court? Turandot is walking around with a drying rack on her head while her chorus accomplices waft sheets around to dry them! I don't like the fact that my attention went everywhere apart from the soprano. Mind you, any kind of set that has Placido Domingo on it is fine by me 😂
2. Oh now, that was just plain daft. I think the director of that must have been on something hallucinogenic. Perhaps the boats were to ferry them across the river Styx? We've gone from modern times to gothic. Why not throw in a bit of mythology to go it? 😂
3. Now I really like this. It gave me chance to listen properly to the aria and appreciate just how beautiful it is, I had missed this in the other two. But can someone please tell me what the heck the woman on the trapeze was all about? I think this is my favourite soprano of all the clips. She has a devine voice.
4. I have to be really careful here as my heart belongs to Jonas Kaufmann and I don't want to be biased. I am rather bewildered by this production. I like the fact that we can hear an uninterrupted aria by the soprano, who is also lovely. But I simply don't get the dolls, bones and the grim reaper lurking in the corner. lol I certainly prefer this version to the first two and, after listening to this version there is no doubt in my mind that Jonas Kaufmann is the best Calaf ever.
So I would say I probably prefer version 3.
Sorry for being so long-winded, but you did ask! I think you are brilliant and so love these opera ponder videos you produce. I really enjoyed this one ❤
I love your analysis! And your explanation for the boats in the second production? That might have very well been the idea of them, I missed that completely...
I couldn't help but laugh about your "woman on the trapeze" sentence 😄 I am not sure but my suspicion is that this is not a woman but the Chinese emperor 😂 But I might be completely wrong about this but "the woman on the trapeze" definitely made my day.
Although I am in complete awe of the Wilson production (and Tamara Wilson? What a voice!!!) I prefer version number 4 simply because it left me with so many questions and thoughts, really inspiring...
And again: Thank you for your kind words 🙏
The woman on the trapeze? Well that is just typical of me, isn't it? lol I do apologise Emporer. That's a lovely frock you've got on. Note to self, get your glasses checked! 😀😀😀😀
@@operaFan-tn8ng Hey, don't run to your ophthalmologist yet - I was just guessing. Maybe the person on the trapeze IS a random woman 🤷♂😄
I think I'll have to watch it again to make sure. I'll have to use my opera glasses this time!!
Oh yes. Definitely a man. Ahem😊 rofl
Honestly, I would far rather watch Zeffirelli's production. At least it makes sense dramatically. And what's wrong with a bit of gratuitous OTT staging?
Zeffirelli's production of course makes sense. It's the kind of production where you lean back, bring out the popcorn and enjoy it without having to have a single thought of your own. And that can be great, I get that. We all have moments where we just want to turn off our brains and are just consuming. Nothing bad about that, i do it as well for example when i watch some sitcom on tv/Netflix.
And do i enjoy the orchestra of the met, the fantastic chorus and the splendid singers? Yes, I do 🙂
But all productions are children of their time. And for me personally that means that i can watch productions from 30 or 60 years ago and enjoy them as an historic document. But for me the lack of intellectual curiosity displayed in this Zeffirelli Turandot is not what i am interested in theater/opera. 🤷♂️
The Mets Zeffirelli production is the best Turandot in my opinion the best ever done. I’ve seen this product many times and never get tired of it. You ask why? My answer is why not. We as opera goers go to the theater to be wowed by the music, singing and what we see onstage. Zeffirelli in my opinion was the best in stage design. Present day productions in my opinion are for the most part horrible. Empty stages,updated modern dress. Totally taken out of context. Many designers and directors has no respect for the composers. The Sondra Radvanofsky production was one of the ugliest things I’ve seen. I would have walked out. I’m afraid to attend operas anymore because I’m afraid of what I’m going to see onstage. The Houston Grand Operas staging was not bad. It was a no frills staging.. the Vienna staging was a horrible disaster. You may disagree with me on everything I said , but that ok, we have different tastes.
Sorry for my late reply - yes, I disagree but that's, as you said, okay 🙂👍 Of course Zefirelli was a hugely important player from the 50s onwards and he did a lot of great work removing the dust and trying to make the human drama more relatable. But this Turandot? I don't know...It's like having an already heavy chocolate cake and then adding some extra thick frosting and then some marzipan toppings and sugar flowers and whipped cream - its so much that in the end one forgets how the actual cake tastes. I know this is a botched analogy but I do the best I can 😄 But we find common ground again in our dislike of the Naples production 🙏
The problem I have with his argument is he sees this operas as significant pieces of dramatic theatre. Film has reinvented itself, but doesn’t tell the same stories now as it did 100 years ago. Very few plays of the 18th/19th century still survive today. But opera is stuck in pieces over a century old. As you saw with film, dramatic sensibilities of the 1920s aren’t relevant today, so why should we be suffering through a bastardisation of the music of that same period? Let’s compose new stuff and try to enjoy new sounds and subjects in opera. You can set Turandot in a Vietnamese software factory and the libretto and music will still be 1920s Italy, be old fashioned and have little relevance to today.
Thank you for your comment! You make a very good point about the lack of newly composed operas with contemporary topics. And I tried to emphasize this in my video about Nixon in China...
Where I disagree is your assessment about the relevance of the classic dramas/operas from the 18th and 19th century. The top 100 (random number...) of them are still played all the time because they tell us universal and timeless stories and truths about ourselves, be it the Ancient Greek dramas or Shakespeare, Schiller, Strindberg etc. The solution couldn't be in my opinion to get rid of them but to supplement them with new dramas and operas.
@@peterpawlik2495 I live in the UK and the majority of the theatre experience enjoyed here is commercial. Again. Shakespeare is rarely performed outside of the RSC and the Globe, because the language is so convoluted and nearly incomprehensible to most theatrical goers, never mind the general public. I love Kabale und Lieber and Don Carlos, but they are never performed and the rest of Schillers plays are unheard of. I would say the oldest play writes still commercially viable in the UK are Oscar Wilde and maybe Noel Coward. Public theatre, or state funded theatre, would have more Strindbergs, Chekhov’s, Ibsen etc, but that’s because they have educational value as part of the western canon. I think that’s the important factor of this is Canonical works and their relevance. I’m not sure that these plays are relevant to younger generations and they’re increasingly becoming problematic for the political/ racial/ gender issues they espouse. There’s only so much you can do with Turandot before you realise embedded in the score is orientalism, there’s only so much you can do with Wagner before you see the infantilisation of his women is rooted in sexism.
@@peteradaniel You are right - I was talking with my upbringing in Germany and Austria as background. Here the idea of theater having an educational component to it is still very alive. I was aware of the commercial based philosophy of the British and American theater system (private sponsorships etc) but failed to think of it when I wrote my answer to your comment.
And you make a very good point when talking about the embedded orientalism and/or sexism in some (actually: many) of the canonical works. That's one reason why I liked the Vienna production so much. It didn't focus on the empty pomp often associated with Turandot but instead tried to do some digging into why Turandot reacts the way she does. Obviously there is something in her very own personal past (and not just in Lou-Ling's) which triggered this extreme reaction to being suited by a man...
Anyway, it is clear to me as well that the only longtime solution for opera must be to perform contemporary and new operas with new and relevant stories. There is so much to say about that but my answer is already too long, sorry for that.
Radvanosky, Wilson and Grigorian are not Turandots! If you want to hear real Turandot's you have to go back in time Anee Roselle, Eva Turner, Nilsson ext. ext.