Woke overture at Met Opera
Puccini classic gets race warning
They’re striking a chord with the woke crowd.
The famed Metropolitan Opera added a website trigger warning for prospective ticket buyers to Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot,” informing audiences that the 1926 masterpiece set in ancient China could be offensive.
“It is rife with contradictions, distortions, and racial stereotypes,” reads the program note, promising “a discussion of the opera’s cultural insensitivities.”
“It shouldn’t be surprising . . . that many audience members of Chinese descent find it difficult to watch as their own heritage is coopted, fetishized, or painted as savage, bloodthirsty, or backward,” the note continues.
The opera opened Feb. 28 and will run through June 7 at Lincoln Center — with top tickets in the Parterre balcony going for $500.
It tells the story of the brutal, man-hating princess Turandot. Anyone seeking her hand in marriage must answer three riddles, and are put to death if they fail. Eventually one suitor, Calàf, is triumphant but not before many twists and travails.
The Met’s website calls it a “problematic masterpiece.”
‘Racial exasperation’
“I’ve never ever heard of any such warning on any opera ever,” said Atarah Hazzan, 88, a soprano who has performed at the Met and played Turnadot in the ’80s.
“The Met has become very sensitive to many things,” added the Manhattan-based voice coach.
Norman Lebrecht, a critic and founder of the influential music blog Slipped Disc, dismissed the program note as “manufactured racial exasperation.”
“Trigger warnings exist to cover the heightened legal anxieties of theater administrators and the lately inflated sensitivities of underpaid auxiliaries,” he said. “They are bad for business and they should be scrapped.
“‘Turandot’ has fictional Chinese characters. If that bothers you, stay away,” he added.
Phoene Yang, a generative AI researcher who is Chinese and saw the show this week, said she was unbothered by the opera.
“Personally, I agree with most of the opinions in that note,” she said. “For audiences born or raised in China, racial stereotypes in ‘Turandot’ are easily noticeable. But I think trace it back to the time ‘Turandot’ was created, and all of this becomes understandable.”
After the death of George Floyd, the Met took a woke turn, vowing to reorient itself as an “anti-racist organization.” A chief diversity officer position was created, and anti-racism training was mandated for senior managers.
Alongside Giuseppe Verdi and Puccini, the Met recently featured an opera about Malcolm X and another based on the autobiography of progressive New York Times columnist Charles Blow.
“The curators of our great traditions are betraying the legacy that it is their privilege to oversee in order to virtue signal on matters of race and identity,” said Heather Mac Donald, a cultural critic at the Manhattan Institute.
The Met did not respond to request for comment from The Post.