Puccini - Turandot, at La Monnaie in Brussels

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday June 30 2024

Conductor: Ouri Bronchti. Production and Costumes: Christophe Coppens. Sets: Christophe Coppens and I.S.M.Architecten. Lighting: Peter Van Praet. La Principessa Turandot: Ewa Vesin. L’Imperatore Altoum: Ning Liang. Timur: Michele Pertusi. Il Principe Ignoto (Calaf): Stefano La Colla. Liù: Venera Gimadieva. Ping/Un Mandarino: Leon Košavić. Pang/Il Principe di Persia: Alexander Marev. Pong: Valentin Thill. La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and Choral Academy, La Monnaie Children's and Youth Choirs.

All photos except the general view of the set below: Matthias Baus/La Monnaie

'Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels in 1924, leaving the score of his last opera unfinished. A century on, director Christophe Coppens and conductor Ouri Bronchti reveal just how much more there is to the work than its trademark aria "Nessun dorma". Coppens sets his version of Turandot in modern-day Hong Kong, where a wealthy family is corrupted by power, money and violence. The rebellious Princess Turandot tries to escape her mother's control by letting herself be carried away by a whirlwind of fantasies that lead her to the worst extremes.'

Quoted from La Monnaie's website (translated from the French: the English version published on the site misses some subtleties).

In the copious programme notes, Christophe Coppens explains that he imagines his billionaire family living in a huge, tasteless 'sky mansion' built, complete with swimming pool, on the roof of a Hong Kong skyscraper - inspired, possibly, by this story from Bangalore in India. Coppens, who on his own website describes himself as a 'multidisciplinary artist, designer and opera director,' designed (with I.S.M.Architecten) the single set, and the costumes, for his rethinking of the plot.

This photo : Simon Van Rompay/La Monnaie

The set presents a spacious entrance-hall-cum-reception-area, in a cautious art déco style of the kind you might find in an expensive hotel. The stepped pink marble floor is edged with triangles of black. On the right is a sunken, circular seating area in silver-grey satin. Behind it, in the corner, is a graphically rectangular doorway, with doors in the kind of brushed-brass finish favoured by Emirates in its lounges, highlighted with a pattern of slots. A second circle cut, further back, into the marble floor is sometimes home to a table, but also the space where the Prince of Persia strips naked before ascending, to his doom, a grand staircase at the rear. This leads up to a gallery, where on the left, a door opens to hint at a large, smoky, red-lit party space beyond (before the orchestra strikes up for the first act, we hear the distant throb of dance music). On the right, beyond what is probably a small portrait of the 'princess', lacquer screens sometimes part for us to glimpse Turandot's red bedroom. Under the gallery, a series of doors, with wall lights between sometimes reveal a banqueting hall, with metal cloches lined up on long tables, keeping dinner warm, and rows of identical chairs. There are tall french windows on the left of the set, and it is decorated with one or two Chinese antiques (e.g. a jade vase, out of which, eventually, when Ping, Pang and Pong tempt Calaf with money, banknotes will burst), spectacular arrangements of flowers, and a number of curious (I'll explain below) 'contemporary art works', picked out with spotlights.

The costumes of the society guests who here replace the 'popolo di Pekino' are sumptuous. The women's chiffon and brocades glitter with gold threads, sequins and stones. (In fact, they reminded me of Warlikowski's production of King Roger at the Bastille, 'with the court men in dinner suits and the ladies marvellous, made-up harridans in various shades of gold lame and big, Mrs Thatcher wigs'.) Turandot, in contrast, wears a stylish, simple black silk pyjama suit, with short reddish hair. Her loutish côterie slouch around in punky (or Balenciaga?) rags. Her mother, Altoum (yes), wears a tight, stiff, Chinese-style embroidered dress. The staff scuttle around, carrying trays of canapes, in beige suits. The elaborate lighting scheme includes bright white spots, coloured lights both on stage and in the house, strobes, and the imitation of moonlight and fireworks. To sum up: 'du grand spectacle' - 'a show,' as a friend of mine remarked.

The action in the first act, once you've digested the 'Hong-Kong-billionaire-sky-mansion' concept, is at first fairly straightforward. But after the Persian Prince dies, blood oozes out of a strange piece of artwork - representing, or at least evoking, a vagina or some other fleshy orifice - on the rear wall to the right, and maids rush to mop it up. You begin to wonder what's going on. Is this present-day Turandot really killing her suitors, one by one, in her rooftop villa (in the same way that young victims are dragged off, one by one, to Herod's party in the Paris Opera's Salome, before their returning bodies are cast into a pit)? The chorus/guests meanwhile move around politely. Ping, Pang and Pong are, at this stage, in the beige house livery. Later, they will join Turandot's ill-behaved friends in black, and in the final act they appear in dinner jackets, like the male guests.

I mentioned above that on his website, Christophe Coppens describes himself first as a multidisciplinary artist and designer, and only after that as an opera director. The second act confirms what you start to notice in the first, when neither Timur nor even Liu develops any tangible personality: this is, indeed, a designer 'show', but not such a well-directed one. The soloists are left, not for the first time of course, more or less to their own devices. The riddle scene is business as usual, with Calaf standing waiting on the left, and Turandot barking out the clues on the right, in this case from a cylindrical pedestal that rises out of the sunken seating area. (Resembling the cylindrical lift under Pei's pyramid at the Louvre, it offers a platform to anyone with something important to sing, spotlit, in the style of a rock or musical star.) When Liu is tortured, nobody budges an inch to help: Calaf stands in his usual place on the left, facing the audience. And when she runs across half the stage and through the window to leap, Tosca-like, to her death, nobody in a room supposedly crowded with people desperate to know Calaf's name, complete with armed guards, budges an inch to stop her. Ping, Pang and Pong, however, were in contrast lively and engaging.

I won't go on in act-by-act detail. In any case, having only seen the production once, I can't remember it all. But as the opera progresses, the action surrounding the listeless principals gets progressively weirder. The hands and arms of a relief sculpture high up on the left come to life, for example. The corner doorway is filled by a giant, dragon-maw fireplace, breathing smoke and flames and gaping like a gate of hell. When things really fall apart, the Prince of Persia's bloody body slumps out of the fleshy orifice to the floor, and stays there till the final curtain. Turandot watches the now-absent Calaf sing his last (amplified) phrases on a flickering TV screen (has he now, having 'won', taken over as a dictator?) before being arrested, without once uttering the word 'love' in this abridged version of Alfano's ending. Forensic teams move in, cartons are carted off, and the Empress slips out in furs. What started out looking handsome and seeming legible, ended up fizzling out in another set of riddles. To quote more fully the friend I mentioned above, who saw the production before I did:

'Don't expect to get the dramaturgy. All that is a bit confused, but as I say, it's a show (...) a good show, but not really a smart direction.'

The complex stage business, also involving (more than once) curtains, a 'traditional' Turandot (i.e. in Chinese dress with elaborate headgear) in black descending from the rafters, and Calaf's temptresses disappearing through an invisible hole in the floor, was, by the way, all very professionally handled. The technical team was brought on and applauded at the end.

Vocally speaking, the best individual performance (the chorus was on magnificent form) from beginning to end, and strikingly so, was by young Leon Košavić as both the Mandarin and Ping. He really stood out. I was told afterwards, by someone in the business, he's destined for a major career, starting soon. I'll be on the lookout. As I mentioned above, Ping, Pang and Pong were played as vivaciously as usual, whereas the other principals, weakly directed (Timur, for example, just stood or sat looking weary), lacked personality. So Michele Pertusi, despite his artistry and experience, came across, like Ning Liang's straight-backed Altoum, as dull and grey: a waste of a singer who deserves better.

The word that sprang to my mind as Venera Gimadieva started singing was 'juicy'. Hers was a fruity, juicy-voiced Liu, but (with no help from the directing) impassive. Beautiful - Liu's arias are a gift, after all - but not moving. She was still, however, the audience's favourite.

Now, since Sunday, I've been doing a bit of research, trying to find out what diapason was used in Italy before the war - the reason being that I just don't understand why Puccini would have pitched the roles of his two principals so high as to make them nearly unsingable for all but a few. I wondered if he was perhaps composing for a semitone or so lower. But pitch is a minefield, even attracting the worst kind of conspiracy theorists, and while it seems there may have been a 'standard' Italian pitch lower than 440 Hz in the 20s, I've no idea what La Scala may have been up to at the time.

Whatever. As usual, our two principles were stretched to the limit. I'd heard Stefano La Colla before, five years ago in La Gioconda. 'Stefano La Colla’s ample voice would seem to have great potential: big, bright, almost hard and metallic (…) I’d say he still has work to do to sing with more subtlety and control, rather than relying on the wow factor of sheer volume and piercing timbre.' Of course the score is mad, of course he gets full marks for effort, but effort it audibly was: he just about managed to hold the top notes, but they were hard and stiff, there was no grace, no rondeur in the sound, and little pleasure to be got from hearing it.

Ewa Vesin, too, as everyone is saying in print, has all the notes (and sings them loudly), and again, the score is nuts and she gets full marks for making the effort. But as that friend above said, 'Everyone is thrilled if they sing the high notes, but don't care so much how they sing 'em!' I had the impression, in the repetitive riddle scene especially, of being bashed about the head with a blunt instrument.

With the orchestra being loud too, needlessly so for a theatre of the size, it was musically quite a trying afternoon. (My neighbour to the left, usually silent, for once commented on it spontaneously at the end of the first act, clasping her hands over her ears; she had never, she said, heard such a row at La Monnaie). But perhaps I don't like Turandot enough. It's a patchy, unsatisfactory work and I'm sure Puccini would have improved it if he'd had the opportunity. I don't know why, having decided to change and abbreviate the ending, the team chose nevertheless to base it on Alfano. I suppose Berio's ending - the best, as far as I'm concerned - didn't fit the concept. Oh well. The season's over in Brussels (the orchestra threw balloons from the pit to the stage) and after the UK and French (eek), we've just La Vestale to look forward to, in Paris, before the summer holidays - which will, however, include Ermione in Pesaro.

My article ends here. After this break, I'm going to record some initial thoughts I had (and wrote down) on reading the programme notes, but you can skip this unless particularly interested.

*****

'Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels in 1924, leaving the score of his last opera unfinished. A century on, director Christophe Coppens and conductor Ouri Bronchti reveal just how much more there is to the work than its trademark aria "Nessun dorma". Coppens sets his version of Turandot in modern-day Hong Kong, where a wealthy family is corrupted by power, money and violence. The rebellious Princess Turandot tries to escape her mother's control by letting herself be carried away by a whirlwind of fantasies that lead her to the worst extremes.'

This quotation from La Monnaie's website (translated from the French), in a few words, sets not only the scene for Coppens' staging, but also the tone of the programme notes - and ends vaguely, just as the production does.

If I were in a bad mood, I might say that all the programme notes are in the same 'know-all schoolboy essay' tone, eager to 'reveal' what nobody before Coppens and his team had the perspicacity to see: Puccini's astonishing modernity, his assimilation of Schönberg, his in-depth grasp of Chinese civilisation, the lengths he went to (one book and a music box), to master Chinese music, the unsuspected profundity of the libretto - the riddles especially have incredible hidden depths and complexity... And you know, you may never have noticed before, but the work's actually quite weak after Liu's death, definitely calling for a new ending (though, oddly, one still based on Alfano)... Turandot, we learn, is problematic by today's superior standards (though not quite as beyond the pale as Butterfly, which really ought no longer to be performed at all), so it should come with trigger warnings, and we need a genius of a director to take us gently by the hand, walk us through it and set us right...

Fortunately, today I'm of a sunny disposition, despite the first French election results...