‘Wokerati’ ridicule of opera warning
New York’s Metropolitan Opera has been accused of pandering to the “wokerati” by including warnings about Puccini’s “racial stereotypes” in the programme notes to its latest production of Turandot.
The opera, first performed at the Met in 1926, is set in the Imperial Palace of Beijing as Prince Calaf tries to win the heart of Princess Turandot. It culminates in the aria, Nessun Dorma.
Those attending the production, which opened last month and will run until June, are warned that some of the characters may be deemed offensive.
“A western projection of the East, it is rife with contradictions, distortions and racial stereotypes,” Christopher Browner, the Met’s associate editor, writes in his analysis.
“It shouldn’t be surprising then that many audience members of Chinese descent find it difficult to watch as their own heritage is co-opted, fetishised or painted as savage, bloodthirsty or backward.”
When the Met performed Turandot after the pandemic, Anthony Tommasini, the New York Times opera critic, argued that the “wave of anti-Asian hostility” during Covid had “compelled the arts to re-examine lingering prejudices and racist stereotypes”.
But classical music critic David Goldman argued that the soul-searching was unnecessary as China had embraced Puccini. He wrote in the Asia Times newspaper in 2021 that while Turandot
was “abominated in the United States with the wokerati fulminating against its supposed anti-Asian bias”, the Chinese were the “world’s most practical and pragmatic people”. –