‘Turandot’ delivers riddles and romance
Opera Southwest brings Puccini work to NHCC
A mysterious prince solves three riddles and melts a princess’s heart while breaking another’s.
Love triumphs, but it’s complicated.
The story: a vivid fantasy of long-ago China, where the imperious Princess Turandot poses three riddles to any prince who dares to court her, and commands the death of all who fail.
Opera Southwest will produce Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot” at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on March 12, 15, 17 and 19.
As in “Madama Butterfly,” the score is filled with Asian touches, the percussion section in particular packed with gongs and various tuned instruments (xylophones, glockenspiels and the like). It is still, however, an Italian opera with the outrageously titled Ping, Pang and Pong, a spin on classic Commedia dell’arte characters.
“Turandot” celebrates the ability of art to transcend cultural borders. The opera is set in a fairytale vision of ancient China, where the beautiful, yet unapproachable, Princess Turandot rules with an iron fist. To those who wish to marry her, she has issued a challenge: answer her riddles or face execution.
This production of one of Puccini’s most famous operas, known for the aria “Nessun dorma,” (“Let no one sleep,”) will premiere at Opera Southwest and then be presented by partners OperaDelaware and Fargo Moorhead Opera in 2024. Renowned Chinese Director XinXin Tang is coming to the U.S. from her home in Singapore to direct all three productions.
Tang has directed operas in China, Singapore and around the globe. After graduating from the National School of Music and Drama in Hamburg, Germany, from 2011 to 2015 she was the resident director at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, where she directed more than 20 operas. In 2011, she directed “Turandot” to celebrate the 19th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, which was staged at the Seoul Opera House. Since then she directed a new version of “Turandot” in China in 2017, as well as “La Traviata” and many other operas. In 2022, she directed the Singapore premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s opera “L’inganno Felice.”
Tang, the daughter of the principal oboist at the Central Opera House in Beijing, was introduced to “Turandot” at the age of 8. She watched a video her father gave her while she was quarantined with chickenpox. Although she didn’t know Italian, she loved the music and drama, and watched it twice a day.
Soprano Michelle Johnson makes a role debut as Princess Turandot. She was a Grand Prize Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions where she was described by the New York Times as “a clear audience favorite,” and has been lavished with praise for her “extraordinary breath control and flawless articulation… Her voice is velvety and pliant — a dulcet dream.” Johnson has performed in opera productions across the U.S.