Just another dimension?

Saturday, September 06, 2008
Turandot -vvz

Len Chow, Shuquan, Jiangzheng and I went to watch Singapore Lyric Opera's production of Puccini's Turandot on 30th August 2008. Since this was the first time I watched a full-length opera (Chinese opera not counted), I can't really make any comparisons. I do, however, felt that it wasn't too bad overall.

The plot is really contrived and the riddles suck. Here's someone's hilarious take on that. The most popular aria, Nessun Dorma, wasn't quite as majestic as I had expected but still, Tao Weilong did a pretty good job as Calaf.

Judging from the applause, I guessed most people liked the supporting role of slave girl Liu more than the princess Turandot. No surprise there. One sacrifices herself for love and the other is a cold-hearted sore loser. It doesn't help that the supposedly beautiful icy princess isn't very, erm, visually convincing.

I found Rachelle Gerodias, who plays Liu, rather familiar looking. I found out later that she was in SLO's production of Figaro some time back. I must have seen her in the papers. The music was another aspect of Turandot I found strangely familiar. It took me a few days before I realized that I heard some of the melodies before from this ice princess (more visually convincing):

-- permalink --
Yiheng made 10:22 AM

1 Comments:

I did some reading up on Turandot after the show. Apparently, Turandot was Puccini's last opera, and he died before completing it. Luckily he died after Nessum Dorma right around the part where Liu kills herself. From then onwards, the end was written by another person.

Some critics have pointed out that the ending was rather rushed and harried and it seemed like quite a big jump in plot for the princess to suddenly melt in the arms of Calaf minutes after Liu's death.
By Soqcrates, at 12:26 AM




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