Robert Wilson’s static Paris Turandot focuses the mind on Puccini’s score and some excellent singing

France Puccini, Turandot: Soloists, Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine, Chorus, Children’s Choir and Orchestra of Paris Opera / Marco Armiliato (conductor). Broadcast live (directed by François Roussillon) from the Opéra Bastille, Paris, 13.11.2023. (JPr)\

This is my first encounter with the work of Robert Wilson who I have seen described as ‘an institution of the American experimental theatre.’ In a profile for The New York Times, the now 82-year-old, Wilson was said to have ‘one of the most recognisable styles in modern theatre’ and how ‘his starkly drawn tableaus of abstract lines and shapes, lit with minute precision, have adorned Shakespeare plays and Philip Glass operas alike.’ This revival of Turandot at the Paris Opera is his (in)famous co-production with the Canadian Opera Company, National Theatre of Lithuania and Houston Grand Opera and with premiered at Madrid’s Teatro Real in 2018. I had read about it but never seen it until now.

The continual semaphoring and what movement there was often had a ritualistic beauty despite a well-rehearsed precision which some singers in this performance seemed to ‘buy into’ more than others; there were no sets, almost no props, and an obvious exactness to the chiaroscuro lighting. It is not a surprise to me therefore that Wilson is listed as having input into the set – or rather lack of it – and lighting.

Hopefully, we all know – or think we do – Turandot? It is a fairy tale set in a mythical China with the unyielding and cruel Princess Turandot refusing to marry, though if she does it will not be to just anybody and they need to solve three riddles first or they will lose their heads. An unknown prince shows up at her palace in Peking (now Beijing) and – for some reason – becomes so infatuated with Turandot that he is willing to risk his life in order to win her as his bride. A blind, deposed king (Timur) is travelling with a slave girl (Liù) and encounters the unknown prince at the palace who happens to be his son. After the prince solves the riddles he sets Turandot the task of discovering his name. Eventually we learn it is Calaf but to Turandot he will be ‘love’.

Even my brief and incomplete introduction to the opera suggests more going on than we see on the stage of the Bastille Opera. We have from Wilson something that if it is not static, might as well be, as no characters interact, with the possible exception of Turandot’s ‘ministers’ Ping, Pang and Pong. Calaf would have trouble falling in love with Turandot at first sight, as he is supposed to, because he spends most of the time near the front of the stage often with his right hand raised – like most of the characters from time to time – and staring out in front of him. Like Timur, Liù and the Emperor, Calaf’s costume is white (or whitish) and their faces are made-up white bringing Kabuki theatre to mind. Turandot is in scarlet with an elaborate headpiece and makes her first appearance (not the singer but a lookalike) on a platform high above the stage. Arriving onstage in Act II Turandot glides across the stage on a small plinth and even without it in the third act moves rather like a Dalek in TV’s Dr Who.

The Imperial Guards have a hint of the Terracotta Warriors about them whilst all the rest of the people crowding the stage look suitably dowdy though appropriate for ‘old Peking’. Indeed, apart from some use of red in the backdrop the stage pictures are mostly monochrome with even Ping, Pang and Pong in dark suits, dark shirts and black bowties. To be truthful the trio’s gurning, gesticulating, quirks, leaping and bobbing around gets a little tiresome though they have they origins I think in commedia dell’arte, while to me they sometimes looked like puppets with their strings cut!

Turandot orders the prince’s name must be discover or people will die and any violence, such as the torturing of Timur and Liù in the third act, is mimed and after Liù kills herself she roams the stage with Timur before exiting, with only the lighting changing. Not only do Calaf and Turandot never touch but for the concluding bars of the Alfano completion we hear Calaf leaves the stage. Turandot is left at the front as a perpendicular white streak is shown going down the red backdrop which is as puzzling as a stork we saw flying across the back during the first act (though a stork seems to be mentioned in the libretto).

Increasingly your mind focuses on Puccini’s colourful score and the singing of the chorus and principals to deliver any genuine emotion which is otherwise lacking in Wilson’s staging. The conductor was the ever-reliable Marco Armiliato who is a known quantity in Italian music and together with his orchestra produced some thrilling sounds to provide nearly all the drama needed to keep an audience engrossed by what they were seeing in spite of Wilson’s concept.

Iréne Theorin returned to this version of Turandot she originated in the 2018 Madrid premiere. Listening through loudspeakers it seems intervening years have taken a toll on her voice. It had undoubted power and whilst Theorin sang authoritatively and with a chilling intensity, her soprano voice was a little squally at times and had a steely edge reminding me of Dame Gwyneth Jones in the role. Although Brian Jagde’s voice was rather baritonal it had impressive heft, an even tone and effortless, ringing top notes: he ended ‘Nessun dorma’ with a sustained B, smiling and with arms spread wide. Ermonela Jaho’s Liù alone elicited sympathy with her spinetingling arias and impressively floated pianissimo high notes in her first and third act showstopping arias, Liù’s death scene, thanks to Jaho, had all the pathos you would expect from a Puccini heroine but perhaps not a Wilson one.

Mika Kares used his sonorous bass to good effect as Timur and his sorrow at Liù’s death was movingly acted and sung (though he never actually moved much at all during the opera). Florent Mbia, Maciej Kwaśnikowski, Nicholas Jones as Ping, Pang and Pong did not, individually, have the strongest voices I have heard but they blended well. Carlo Bosi, another Italian opera stalwart, provided one of his typically superb vignettes as the aged Emperor singing above the stage on – what looked like – a trapeze and sang solidly with little of the enfeeblement we can sometimes hear. Guilhem Worms was a commanding Mandarin and finally the choruses sang their important contributions with confidence and a gripping vitality.

Would I bother to watch Wilson’s Turandot again, I am undecided and it would depend on the cast because one thing the production does not do is get in the way of the music and – on a basic level – there has occasionally been rather more ‘action’ and ‘interaction’ in a good semi-staging of the opera; which this, more often than not, resembles.

Jim Pritchard

Production:
Director, Set and Lighting design – Robert Wilson
Co-stage director – Nicola Panzer
Set design – Stephanie Engeln
Lighting design – John Torres
Costume design – Jacques Reynaud
Video – Tomek Jeziorski
Dramaturgy – José Enrique Macián
Chorus master – Ching-Lien Wu
Directeur de la Maîtrise – Gaël Darchen

Cast:
Turandot – Iréne Theorin
Calaf – Brian Jagde
Liù – Ermonela Jaho
Altoum – Carlo Bosi
Timur – Mika Kares
Ping – Florent Mbia
Pang – Maciej Kwaśnikowski
Pong – Nicholas Jones
A Mandarin – Guilhem Worms
The Prince of Persia – Hyun-Jong Roh
Two handmaids – Pranvera Lehnert, Izabella Wnorowska-Pluchart