From July 3rd to 22nd, Madrid’s Teatro Real presents its production of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot, with Nicola Luisotti and Diego García Rodríguez as artistic directors, Robert Wilson as stage director and the Teatro Real’s Titular Chorus and Orchestra.
With his last opera -unfinished at his death in 1924 and completed by Franco Alfano- Giacomo Puccini took an ambitious step in adapting his style to the new musical currents developed after the Great War. Taking as his starting point a piece from the 18th century Commedia dell’Arte, Puccini moved in a direction that points unmistakably -but without losing his own identity- to the author of The Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky. Thus, in Turandot, the melodic intensity of the arias -“Nessun dorma”-, the echo of Chinese folk songs -“Mòlìhuā” or “The Jasmine Flower”-, characters from the puppet theatre -Ping, Pang and Pong- and instrumentation and rhythms of a distinctly Stravinskian tribal colour coexist.
This Teatro Real production is produced in conjunction with the Lithuanian National Theatre, the Canadian Opera Company of Toronto, the Houston Grand Opera and the Opéra National de Paris.
Turandot is also -like The Rite of Spring- a grandiose fertility ritual in which, through the ceremony of the three riddles, the sexual act ceases to be a brutal demonstration of male domination and is transfigured into a mutually consensual amorous encounter. Robert Wilson’s stylised staging moves along these lines – ritualistic and symbolic. Tickets can be purchased at this link.
