“I want scared children,” Mark Meier, the stage director says. “Scared children.”
I’ve arrived at the beginning of Union Avenue Opera’s run-through for Turandot, during the frantic mob scene in which the bloodthirsty crowd, excited by the prospect of another execution, has to be pushed back by guards.
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Turnadot, ice queen extraordinaire, has declared that the only way a man can marry her is if he answers three riddles correctly. If he fails, he will be beheaded. The Prince of Persia is the latest victim and the people of Peking can’t wait to see his head roll.
Our hero, Prince Calaf, has just arrived in Peking and sees his exiled father, Timur, who has been wandering China with a slave, Liu. She’s in love with Calaf. But after one look, Calaf is smitten with Turandot.
“I love this role,” says Alexandra LoBianco who plays Turandot in the production. “The beauty of [the show] is that she does melt, and we study the transformation of a very icy, protective exterior to a melted real woman by the end of it.”
Calaf answers the riddles correctly but Turandot still refuses to marry him so he says that if she can guess his name by dawn, then she can still behead him. Her palace guards find Liu and Timur and threaten to torture both of them, because they saw them talking to Calaf and must know his name. To protect Timur, Liu says she is the only one who knows Calaf’s name. She’s then tortured and kills herself without revealing anything.
“[Truandot’s transformation is] possible because of Liu’s death,” explains LoBioanco. “Sacrifice begins rebirth.”
This was Giacomo Puccini’s last opera, which he left unfinished when he died in 1924. And because of that, the link between Liu’s death and Turandot’s transformation isn’t as strong as it could be. It is later in the third act, when Calaf kisses Turandot that her heart finally really melts. But Puccini certainly intended Liu’s death to be “a means of softening the heart of the princess,” which he wrote in a letter to his librettists. (Liu’s death, which was not in Puccini’s source material, has been called part of the composer’s “neurotic compulsion to include a death scene at all costs,” by some scholars.)
But story blips aside, the opera is famously lavish. “It’s one of the most fantastic operas,” explains Meier. “It’s rich with everything you’d want in an opera: big, crazy, wild, chorus scenes, incredible solo arias, beautiful arias. It’s a big, big, big piece.”
There is a 16-member chorus and a 10-member children’s chorus in the show. “Puccini wanted there to be a huge sound,” explains John Garrett, who plays Turandot’s father. “In this space, this size hall, sixteen singers will more than fill that space.”
There are elaborate costumes, bejeweled headdresses, Turandot’s sparkly finger nails, but that aria… “Nessun Dorma!” Certainly one of the most famous of all time, for good reason, and when, in the middle of rehearsal Adam Herskowitz, who plays Calaf hits it full voice, you’re reminded not only what made Puccini great, but why you go see opera in the first place.
Union Avenue Opera’s 17th season includes Rossini’s Cinderella July 29 & 30 and August 6 & 7, and Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie August 19, 20, 26 and 27. Read Darren Orf’s review of the full staging of Turandot here.
Turandot rehearsal pictures
Text and photos by Rosalind Early
