by usia review
Turandot: The Triumph of Love or Liú’s Mourning?
Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, remained unfinished at the time of the composer’s death in 1924, completed only up to the poignant death of Liú. The remaining score, featuring the Princess’s sudden emotional metamorphosis and her romantic union with Calaf, the Prince of Persia, was famously completed by Franco Alfano using Puccini’s remaining sketches. It is precisely this traditional resolution that the seventh edition of Operafest Lisboa sets out to boldly challenge. Heroically spearheaded by soprano Catarina Molder through her independent company Ópera do Castelo—a formidable force in promoting opera across Portugal through diverse programming that spans world premieres, contemporary competitions, marathons, and upcoming stagings such as Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro—the festival has consistently distinguished itself with adventurous artistic vision. Framed this season around three overarching thematic enigmas—Hope, Blood, and Turandot—this new production, imported from the Wiesbaden Opera under the direction of Daniela Kerck, offers a radical rethinking of Puccini’s final masterpiece.
At the core of Kerck’s concept is a profound skepticism toward the opera’s conventional happy ending. Turandot’s abrupt transition from cold, repressed hatred to passionate love has long posed a psychological dilemma; Calaf’s forceful kiss often feels more like an imposition than the catalyst for genuine affection, rendering the traditional celebratory finale hollow. Kerck addresses this dramaturgical flaw with a daring intervention: eliminating Alfano’s duet and final chorus entirely, she replaces them with Puccini’s own Requiem. In doing so, the production strips away the sudden, unconvincing triumph of love and replaces it with solemn mourning. While such a modern revision might divide traditionalists in the audience, it possesses remarkable conceptual coherence, gaining a poignant symbolic resonance in this centenary year as if Puccini himself were returning to conclude his interrupted work. By discarding the exuberant final chorus—"Diecimila anni al nostro Imperatore" and "Il suo nome è Amore!"—and the central love duet, Kerck redirects the opera’s moral axis. Drawing from Carlo Gozzi’s original commedia dell'arte fable, where romantic redemption is paramount, this staging chooses instead to reject convenient resolution, placing selfless sacrifice at the ethical center of the narrative.
This conceptual shift deeply enriches the symbolic weight of the opera’s three riddles—Hope, Blood, and Turandot—which serve as both its theatrical engine and an allegory for the human condition: the hope to conquer death, the blood demanded by illusion, and the frozen woman concealed behind an icy mask. Puccini’s intricate score, enriched with authentic Chinese melodies, gong, and Chinese xylophone to evoke both exoticism and underlying cruelty, finds robust expression under the baton of Maestro Osvaldo Ferreira. Conducting the orchestra with security, nuance, and lyrical sensitivity, Ferreira proved to be a standout presence in the pit. Meanwhile, the chorus, prepared by Filipa Palhares, produced a remarkably rich and cohesive sound despite its compact size.
Vocally, the production offered strong individual performances across the cast. As Calaf, Mexican tenor Rodrigo Garull displayed a voice of impressive dramatic scale and warm presence. Though the iconic high B-natural at the climax of "Nessun Dorma" could have been sustained a moment longer, Garull brought genuine humanity and vocal security to the Prince. As the icy Princess Turandot, Russian dramatic soprano Olesya Golovneva delivered a formidable performance backed by rigorous vocal technique, successfully balancing commanding authority with glimpses of inner torment. Nuno Dias added dignity and vocal solidness as the blind king Timur, leading a dependable supporting ensemble of Portuguese singers.
Yet the unquestionable revelation of the night was soprano Aida Pascu in the role of Liú. Boasting a warm, enveloping lyric-spinto timbre, Pascu delivered a performance of extraordinary musicality, marked by impeccable legato and deep emotional truth. Through her portrayal, Liú emerged not merely as a tragic secondary figure, but as the true emotional and moral heart of the opera. By replacing the triumphal finale with the solemnity of Puccini's Requiem following Liú's death, Daniela Kerck delivers an ending without easy redemption. It is a controversial yet undeniably compelling reading—one that asks us who truly stands as the heroine of Puccini's final vision. In this production, the answer is clear and unequivocal: it is Liú.
Thanks to: Catarina Molder