PUCCINI’S GRAND OPERA
Final work hits Calgary stage
Michele Capalbo waited a decade to sing Turandot.
It’s not that the Verdian soprano is easily intimidated. She has spent a career putting her stamp on some of opera’s most beloved roles: Aida, Verdi’s Desdemona, Cio-Cio-san in Madame Butterfly.
But there was something about Turandot, the icy man-hating princess of Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, that seemed particularly daunting to the performer 10 years ago when she was first offered the chance to sing the role.
“You really have to find her vulnerability and not just when she melts from her first kiss,” says Capalbo, who takes on the title role in Calgary Opera’s production of Turandot. “You have to find glimmers of it throughout. For the character challenge, I just couldn’t go into the role saying, ‘I’m singing this role because it was offered to me and I guess it’s time.’ I had to find a way to feel something for this girl. She is finally making me feel something. Yes, she’s called an ice princess and she is an ice princess. But there’s more to her. She is a woman underneath.”
Set in China, the opera tells the tale of the beautiful but defiant Princess Turandot, who wards off potential suitors by forcing them to solve three riddles to win her hand. Those who fail are beheaded. When the dashing Prince Calaf falls in love with Turandot at first sight, he accepts her challenge. After succeeding in answering the three riddles, she still refuses him. So he challenges her to his own riddle. If she fails, they will marry. If she answers successfully, he will be executed.
So, yes, it can be a little grim. There’s beheadings and torture and a suicide. But, at least in this version, there is also a happy-ever-after ending and, perhaps more importantly, beautiful and technically challenging music.
“Turandot is not just high and loud and that’s most people’s impression,” says Capalbo. “In this gestation period of 10 years, it was my goal to be able to sing it come scrit to, which is as written. He has a lot of piano, a lot of soft singing, a lot of dulcet sweet singing.”
A lavish, multi-layered production, Turandot is both controversial for what some critics see as its misogynistic leanings and exoticized view of Asian culture; and beloved for its dazzling production possibilities and rich music. That includes the final-act aria Nessun dorma, which may be the most well-known arias of all time. Turandot, which opens Saturday at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, was Puccini’s final opera and he died in 1924 before it could be finished. His publisher controversially chose Italian composer Franco Alfano to complete the final two scenes in 1926. There have been alternate endings provided over the years, including a decidedly less happy finale recently concocted by 100-year-old opera conductor and composer Anton Coppola.
Calgary Opera itself performed Turandot back in 2005 with its original ending intact, but with a very different tone. Brian Deedrick directed that production and is again back at the helm. Twelve years ago, Turandot became a “highly stylized, quite austere” piece for Calgary Opera.
“This one goes back to fairy-tale land,” Deedrick says. “This one is lush and — I’m not sure if this is a swear word or not — but there’s almost a Disneyesque element to this one. This is oldfashioned storytelling ... Yes, indeed, there is a happy ending and there are those who would say that is unfair and wrong, that the Disney princesses should never have a boyfriend at the end. The character of Turandot for me, particularly with this production, is all about the process of becoming a woman.”
Alongside Capalbo, tenor David Pomeroy plays Calaf; soprano Maria teresa Magisano plays the doomed slave girl Liu, while bass baritone Alexandre Sly vestre plays Calaf’s father Timur. But the lavish production has a cast of more than 70 singers, including more than a dozen children and nearly 40 in the chorus. Turandot was the grandest of Puccini’s operas, Deedrick says.
“When you’ve got a show this big,” he explains, “you can extrapolate from there and realize this is a huge undertaking. I’m really excited because Calgary Opera has embraced ‘go big or go home’ with this one.”
Turandot will be performed April 1, 5 and 7 at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. Performances are at 7:30 p.m.