Colin’s Cultural Corner
Turandot (Rehearsal)
8th March 2023 - Royal Opera House
Yup this was a rehearsal. The final dress before opening. They’re open to Friends to book and have very limited availability as it’s just the one performance. So tickets are like gold dust. I managed to bag one yesterday morning by rocking up at the box office and asking if they had any left.
Centre seat, towards the back of the amphitheatre/gods but nothing wrong with the view at all.
Never having seen Turandot, or having heard the music before I didn’t know what to expect apart from a tales of love and death as this was Opera after all.
I say I haven’t heard the music before but of course I’ve heard one song, Nessum Dorma. More on that later.
Plot time! Are you ready for the most compassionate and kindhearted of opera plots around? You are! Well I hate to disappoint but this is one relentlessly cruel plot.
Chinese Emperor has a daughter, Princess Turandot, and he’s trying to get her married off. She’s not keen because she’s the self-declared living embodiment of her ancestor aunt, who was a fierce and independent woman until she was raped.
Turandot is cold to all men, but especially cruel to suitors. She sets them three riddles and when they fail to solve them they’re beheaded.
Anyway…as we open in the Imperial Court in Peking the very young Prince of Persia has just failed to solve the riddles. He’s being paraded around a bit before his execution but the crowd are wiped by his handsomeness and youth and are calling for mercy.
Turandot indicates with one very dismissive gesture that he is not to be spared and the crowd grow restless.
There’s some jostling.
An old man is pushed to the floor. Nobody seems to notice. Prince is executed. Crowd disperse.
Left on stage are Boy, Old Man and Girl who turns out to be servant of the Old Man. They sing and it’s revealed he is in fact the King of a land long since captured by the Chinese. Boy recognises Old Man as his father and is thus revealed as being a Prince.
Girl is clearly in love with Boy but Boy declares his love for Turandot who he’s only seen the once and that was when she was giving the signal to execute the Prince of Persia.
At this point I’m sensing that maybe this isn’t going to end well.
So Prince goes on a bit about wanting to marry Turandot and sets off to sort of register to take on the riddles I guess. Many try to dissuade him as failure is Death but he’s insistent.
Turandot sets him three riddles. He solves all three and wins her hand in marriage. She’s not having any of it though and refuses to wed.
He sets her one riddle, to find out his name before dawn. If she does then the wedding is off and he can be executed. If she doesn’t then the wedding is on and the gift list is updated to include years of couples therapy.
Turandot, really comfortable accessing her compassionate heart by now, issues a diktat that nobody in Peking shall sleep until she knows his name. She also adds that if anyone does sleep they’ll be executed and that if nobody gives her his name by dawn they’ll all be executed.
This is where Nessum Dorma comes in. The Prince sings and it’s basically saying that nobody will sleep and that Turandot is a cold hearted woman who he will thaw by one kiss after she confirms she doesn’t know his name.
Turandot is desperate and so orders the capture and torture of Old Man and Girl.
Girl refuses to divulge name and kill’s herself. Prince then mistakenly reveals his name a tad before dawn and gives Turandot the opportunity to have him killed.
Except she does no such thing because by now she’s in love with him so declares that she’ll marry him!
They marry and live happily ever after apart from being tormented by memories of Turandot being a cold and evil woman responsible for many being murdered.
The production was stunning. 100 strong choir is on stage most of the time. Music was passionate and the sets were beautiful. I loved it!
we live hours apart and he knows I'm seeing someone at the moment, but we became quite close in the sense we can speak about pretty much everything. We agree we are the best people we have met in that app!
