Concert Review: Songs from a Hockey Arena

Billy Joel rocks Madison Square Garden...again.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Big Shot: Billy Joel at the piano for your dining and dancing pleasure.
Photo © 2017 LiveNation.

OK. Maybe you're waking up, opening my blog page or getting your daily e-mail and going...."Alright. That Pelkonen kid has lost it again. First that Dream Theater review. Then those guys with the three drummers...and now...Billy Joel? The piano man?" Well yes. I saw Mr. Joel's show last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden and enjoyed it thoroughly, and decided to write about it. So settle down, Beavis, pour yourself a glass from a bottle of red or a bottle of white, and let me do my thing.

Opera Review: This...is...Jeopardy!

The Metropolitan Opera revives Turandot.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

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.)

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Turandot

Fantastical, phantasmagorical and faintly ridiculous.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

That's amore: Marcelo Alvarez (center) woos Turandot as thousands cheer.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Met's elaborate production of Puccini's final opera returns to the delight of people who like "Nessun dorma" and big, elaborate productions.

New Head on the Block

Puccini's Turandot claims yet another victim.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Princess Turandot. Art from the original cover of the score as published by Ricordi.

The title character of Puccini's final opera Turandot is a fabulous Chinese princess, and possibly the most bloodthirsty heroine in opera. Y'see, Turandot, the daughter of the Chinese Emperor, is a single girl. And in a vow to her ancestor, she has her would-be suitors decapitated when they fail to answer three riddles. One could view this work as an exotic vision of ancient China through the eyes of a late Romantic Italian composer...or a game show gone horribly wrong.

Opera Review: Ice, Ice, Princess

Christine Goerke reigns in the Met's Turandot.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A love supreme: Christine Goerke as Turandot.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

One of the problems with the Metropolitan Opera's 20-year-old production of Turandot is that audiences come not for the singing, but for the sumptuous sets, elaborately costumed choruses and a fantastical vision of legendary China as seen through the Italianate lenses of composer Giacomo Puccini and producer Franco Zeffirelli. This year, though, things are different, and not just in the opening crowd scene and refreshed choreography.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Turandot

Three very different casts and three runs for Puccini's final opera. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The executioner Pu-Tin-Pao (Left) confronts a giant Chinese dragon in the first act
of the Metropolitan Opera's production of Puccini's Turandot.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

This umpteenth revival of the Metropolitan Opera's everything-into-the-wok Franco Zeffirelli production of Puccini's Turandot appears in three separate runs this season. Christine Goerke, Lise Lindstrom, Jennifer Wilson and Nina Stemme are the four formidable sopranos who will sing the hellishly difficult title role. This is one of the last surviving Zeff productions in the Met repertory along with La bohéme, and is a feast for the eyes as well as the ears.

Six Minutes in the Temple of Heaven

Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli in Turandot.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Birgit Nilsson as Turandot.

I was working on this year's edition of the Metropolitan Opera Preview and came across an example of Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli squaring off in Act II of the Puccini opera Turandot. This aria and following duet is some of the most punishing music in the Italian repertory but La Nilsson makes it look effortless. Clips are after the break.

The Execution is Cancelled

Met stays dark as tonight's Turandot nixed.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The set for Act III of the Met's Turandot.
Image © The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera has announced on its website that today's planned performance of Turandot has been cancelled. This news will presumably be a great relief to the Prince of Persia, who gets decapitated midway through the first act.

The company's business office is closed today. Full ticket refund and exchange information is available here.

The Met has also announced on its website that Thursday's Met Talks event, designed to preview its upcoming new production of Un Ballo in Maschera has been cancelled.

In related news, all events at Lincoln Center are cancelled today. Carnegie Hall has announced that they are closed today and tomorrow.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a complete Turandot (the Franco Zeffirelli production) filmed at the Met in 1989. This performance stars Placído Domingo, Leona Mitchell and Eva Marton in the title role. Enjoy, and stay safe out there.

Opera Review: A Golden Turandot

Reposted from The Classical Review.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Maria Guleghina as the Princess Turandot. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2012 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera celebrates the 25th anniversary of the 
company’s over-the-top 1987 Franco Zeffirelli production of Puccini’s 
Turandot this year. At Wednesday’s opening night, the show 
looked and sounded surprisingly fresh, serving as a gilt framework for an evening of tremendous vocal performances from the three principals.

Read the whole review by Superconductor's Paul J. Pelkonen, exclusively on The Classical Review.

Chinese Bureaucracy

A short reflection on Puccini's birthday.

Your yuan at work: Eduardo Valdes (Pong) Joshua Hopkins (Ping) and Tony Stevenson (Pang)
in Act II of Turandot. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2009 The Metropolitan Opera.

Today we celebrate the 153rd birthday of composer Giacomo Puccini, the last of an iconic line of Italian opera composers. And I'm celebrating by focusing on an opera he never finished: (my first opera ever) Turandot.

It all started with Puccini for me. My parents took me to see Turandot at the New York City Opera when I was just nine years old. I don't remember everything about it, but I did like it enough to want to see La bohème a few weeks later. This was back when City Opera had their performances in the summer, so my parents had the time to take me.

Although Puccini's last opera, a blood-thirsty mixture of fairy-tale and Asian exoticism, is not the ideal starter opera, the story appealed to me. It was about riddles and solving problems, and the guy got the girl in the end. Of course, it's a little different when you're grown up, but I was hooked, and hooked early.

Two things stuck with me about that Turandot. First, the riddles. I spent hours poring over them in the libretto, trying to fathom why the answers were "fire," "blood," and "Turandot." The second was the three "masque" characters of Ping, Pang and Pong, who serve as a miniature Greek chorus, commenting on the action and presenting the face of Chinese government bureaucracy.

I know that everybody waits with baited breath for "In questa reggia," the Riddle Scene or the famous "Nessun dorma." But for me, Turandot is all about "Ho una casa nell'Honan", a moment of relative peace in the lives of three bureaucrats stuck in the middle of the Chinese court. Here, Ping (the Grand Chancellor), Pang (the General Purveyor) and Pong (the Chief Cook) long for the simple pleasures of country life.

This is their featured scene from Act II, Scene 1 of the Met's Franco Zeffirelli production, filmed on April 4, 1987. Brian Schexnayder is Ping. Alan Glassman is Pang. Anthony Lanciura is Pong. 

Enjoy.

Opera Review: Peking Bling

A Note From the Management (G sharp): It's catch-up day here at the Superconductor blog...there is lots to write about and I hope you've got your reading glasses on. Two opera reviews and maybe a CD review if I have the energy. So, without further ado, hoodoo, or to-do, awaaay we go...

Turandot at the Met

Everyone onstage: the finale of Turandot. 
Photo by Ken Howard © 2007 The Metropolitan Opera.

OK. Let me start this review by saying that Turandot has a special place in my heart. It was the first opera I ever saw (at the City Opera in 1983) with my parents, and I fell in love with the three riddles (it helped that I was reading The Hobbit at the time) and the antics of Ping, Pang and Pong, the three masque characters who provide this opera with comic relief. That said, for the past 20 years, I have been (more or less) annoyed with Franco Zeffirelli's creaking, cacophonous, overbaked production of this opera, which has held the stage at the Met since 1987.


OK. Enough about the production (for now) The performance:

Despite the technical issues with Ye Olde Beijing, the cast sang very well. Andrea Gruber, heavily made up like the Bride of Frankenstein, sang with a ringing tone, firmly establishing her icy presence as the murderous Princess Turandot. She hit all the big notes in "In Questa Reggia" and charged into the riddle scene, holding the center of the stage despite the distracting-annoying choreography-business that kept taking the eye away from the drama of the opera.

Opposite her, Richard Margison sang with beauty of tone, cutting through the big choruses but never spiraling down towards shrillness. I have seen this singer many times and always found his voice annoying, but not on Monday night--it appears that his voice has aged well and mellowed a bit in recent years. And yes, Virginia, he nailed "Nessun Dorma".

Despite the ferocity of the two leads, the star of the evening was Hei-Kyung Hong, following up her superb Eva in Meistersinger with a sweet, heartbreaking Liu. She floated the pianissimos, (Tebaldi-style) and brought on the heartbreak with her big suicide scene in the final act. It is the sign of a good Turandot (which this was, despite the production) when that scene becomes the emotional climax and core of the whole night, enabling listeners to (for once) ignore the bling and onstage business and focus on the opera.

Unfortunately for the whole cast, their excellent performances were hamstrung by a production that epitomizes pretty much everything that is wrong with big opera productions--bloated sets, bad sight lines and poor decisions on the part of the producer and director. Some examples:

• A stage design that does not allow people in the Family Circle seats (at the very rear and top of the big house) to see Turandot herself in the first act, nor the Emperor in the second. Apparently, one is only worthy to be in the Royal Presence if one buys more expensive seats. Opera lovers don't sit in the Family Circle because they're cheap--we sit there because those seats, for either $15 or $26, give you the best, warmest sound in the entire house. As Deborah Voight told me in 1997, that's "where all the singers are aiming."
  
  
• The pop-up palace in Act I, (not to mention the pop-up gong, probably added so Luciano Pavarotti wouldn't stagger into it while entering the dark, stairway-filled set) shatters one's suspension of disbelief.
  
  
• Having so many choristers on the cramped set denies the actors playing Liu, Timur, and Calaf an opportunity to act and react to the goings-on. It's pageant without dramatic meaning. No meaning + no terror = no impact.
  
  
• The walkways. Last point, I promise. In building his version of legendary Peking, Zeffirelli decided to add walkways which resemble Japanese nightingale floors--the kind used as burglar alarms in Japanese castles--they crack and creak (loudly) when you walk on 'em. That's especially amusing in the first act, when the children's chorus comes onstage carrying the lanterns and singing a soft melody. They are then drowned out by the Met's own version of Snap, Crackle and Pop!