The Metropolitan Opera revives Turandot.
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| James Morris (center) celebrated 1,000 performances at the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday. Here he appears as Timur in Turandot with Aleksandrs Antonenko (left) as The Unknown Prince and Maria Agresta (right) as Liù in Puccini's opera. Photo by Marty Sohl copyright 2017 The Metropolitan Opera. |
Turandot is Giacomo Puccini’s final, unfinished work. It is a a grand fantasy of legendary China as reimagined through the lens of Italian romanticism. It is a farm tale, the story of an ice-hearted princess and the fearless Prince who wins her hand. It is seen (wrongly) as the end point of the genre of Italian opera. It is also, along with La bohème, the last of the Metropolitan Opera’s giant Franco Zeffirelli productions, crowded extravaganzas that evoke the opulence of a bygone era. (In this case, we’re talking about the 1980s.)
