The opera's season opener stumbles.
Lord knows it's easy to dislike Puccini's
Turandot
, his final, unfinished but posthumously completed opera opening the Santa Fe Opera's 49th season. Its hero and heroine, taken together, are the most thoroughly unpleasant in the repertoire. Its libretto presents an awkward fusion of high seriousness and commedia wackiness. For long, long stretches it's a pageant plus choral cantata, not even an opera at all.
Puccini's librettists cobbled together their fairy-tale pastiche based on a Carlo Gozzi plot that calls to mind elements of
The Merchant of Venice
,
Lohengrin
and
Rumpelstiltskin
, all dumped
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into a mythical, mean-spirited ancient China. Would-be suitors to the cruel Princess Turandot have two choices: Answer three riddles and win the icy bride or be, literally, eliminated from the competition. Severed heads abound.
For all that, the piece offers crowd-pleasing vocal histrionics and scope for eye-splitting spectacle that the current production, alas, laboriously delivers. It's a tough show to cast. The scary title role requires an absolutely fearless, top-of-the-range technique as well as drop-dead stage presence. Jennifer Wilson, despite opening night jitters and some downright hazardous staging, made a good impression. In "Questa Reggia," her blockbuster entrance aria, she began cautiously and ended alarmingly, but by the third act was singing with confidence and ease.
Her single-minded suitor Calaf was sung by burly Carl Tanner. More opening night problems: Tanner struggled with allergies but made an attractive if low-keyed impression. Top vocal honors go to Serena Farnocchia as Liu, a slave who loves the oafish Calaf and dies to save his life. Farnocchia's creamy top notes, her elegant
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phrasing and affecting demeanor give the show what little human feeling it can claim. In the thankless role of Timur, Calaf's father, Kevin Langan sang with feeling and power.
The major player in making a relative success of this production, however, was Alan Gilbert, the SFO's astute music director, who conducted. His deliberate, carefully considered treatment of the score avoided bombast and brought out the often surprising originality of Puccini's score. The same cannot be said of Douglas Fitch's cumbersome, witless staging. About his and co-designer Adam Stockhausen's set, there is just one word: plastics. Massive plexiglass staircases careen about the stage while the audience ponders the safety of the clambering cast.
But welcome back Willa Kim, whose glorious costumes provide the most delectable eye-candy since that astonishing
Rossignol
of long, long ago. Kim has given us a
Turandot
to, at least, watch.
