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Love Beyond the Fairy Tale Stuttgart
Staatsoper
06/07/2026 - & June 13, 26, 29, July 5, 8, 18*, 2026
Giacomo Puccini: Turandot
Diego Godoy (Calaf), Ewa Vesin (Turandot), Esther Dierkes (Liù), Goran Juric (Timur), Shigeo Ishino (Ping), Alberto Robert (Pang), Joseph Tancredi (Pong), Heinz Göhrig (Emperor Altoum), Jaewoung Lee (A mandarin)
Staatsopernchor Stuttgart und Kinderchor der Staatsoper Stuttgart, Bernhard Moncado (chorus master), Staatsorchester Stuttgart, Valerio Galli (conductor)
Anna-Sophie Mahler (stage director), Katrin Connan (sets), Pascale Martin, Katrin Connan (costumes), Valentin Däumler (lights), Ivan Estegneev (choreography), Georg Lendorff (videography), Ingo Gerlach (dramaturgy)
E. Vesin (© Martin Sigmund)
Puccini’s Turandot was the composer’s final and arguably greatest achievement. Unlike the sentimental lyricism of La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly or Manon Lescaut, it looked decisively towards the twentieth century, marrying breathtaking orchestral sophistication with an extraordinary command of colour and atmosphere. Its opulent orientalism—far richer and more imaginatively realised than that of Madama Butterfly—was not mere exotic decoration but an integral part of its dramatic architecture. Based ultimately on Carlo Gozzi’s adaptation of François Pétis de la Croix’s Les Mille et un jours (1712), the opera unfolded in an imagined Imperial China where fairy tale, ritual and psychological drama merged into one.
Puccini never lived to complete his masterpiece. Having succumbed to throat cancer in 1924, he left the final duet and conclusion in sketch form. Although he privately favoured Riccardo Zandonai as his successor, Ricordi and his son Tonio instead entrusted the completion to Franco Alfano, whose orchestral language most closely resembled Puccini’s late style. Since the 1926 première, when Toscanini famously stopped after Liù’s death declaring, “Here the Maestro laid down his pen,” the ending has remained one of opera’s great artistic controversies.
The work’s mythical Chinese setting has proved equally contentious. Many modern productions have abandoned its fairy‑tale exoticism in favour of political allegory or psychological abstraction. While Zeffirelli’s luxuriant chinoiserie represented one extreme, excessive austerity risks sacrificing the sense of wonder upon which the opera’s symbolism depends. Anna‑Sophie Mahler’s new Stuttgart production pursued precisely that path and, although intellectually stimulating, ultimately revealed both the strengths and limitations of radical reinterpretation.
Mahler relocated the action from legendary Peking to a sterile dystopian future. Katrin Connan’s striking but unappealing white set was divided into three interconnected worlds: an unseen realm of the ruling elite, a clinically ordered public sphere, and beneath it a vast open‑cast mine symbolising humanity literally excavating the foundations of its own civilisation. The environmental metaphor was unmistakable: in its pursuit of rare earth minerals to sustain technology and artificial intelligence, society had consumed itself. The populace wandered hypnotised by digital screens, incapable of empathy and mechanically celebrating executions as though participating in a computer game. Turandot herself descended within an immense metallic teardrop, an image of frozen emotional isolation that became one of the evening’s most memorable visual motifs.
The conception was rich in ideas but less compelling visually. The ruling elite’s world remained unseen, while dressing the masses in contemporary casual clothing carried an unmistakable warning yet deprived the opera of its mythical atmosphere. Instead of fairy tale, the production became a meditation on technocracy, environmental collapse and emotional paralysis. Robot dogs tortured Liù, omnipresent surveillance and rigidly choreographed crowds evoked a fusion of totalitarianism and technological dehumanisation reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Particularly effective was the portrayal of Ping, Pang and Pong not as comic figures but as weary bureaucrats yearning nostalgically for a simpler existence beyond the machinery of power.
Equally compelling was Mahler’s psychological reading of Turandot. A silent child accompanied the princess throughout much of the evening, representing the vulnerable innocence buried beneath layers of trauma and emotional ice. Although the symbolism occasionally bordered on the obvious, it lent Turandot a touching humanity often absent from conventional portrayals. Yet Mahler overused the device. The child distracted during “In questa reggia”, “Nessun dorma” and even Liù’s “Tu che di gel sei cinta”, exemplifying a directorial tendency to distrust the expressive power of the operatic aria. Having the child play ball with Calaf during “In questa reggia” diminished rather than enhanced the music’s dramatic force.
By contrast, Liù became the embodiment of authentic love and sacrifice, the one truly human figure capable of disrupting this mechanised civilisation. Her death ceased to be merely an act of personal devotion and instead became the catalyst through which love re‑entered an emotionally frozen world.
Yet the production was not without weaknesses. For all its conceptual ambition, the dystopian framework occasionally overwhelmed Puccini’s theatrical instincts. The stylised movements of the chorus sometimes felt self-consciously ironic rather than dramatically inevitable, while the symbolism could appear overdetermined. The repeated appearance of Turandot’s metallic teardrop gradually lost its impact, and the child double occasionally distracted from rather than deepened the central drama. Most significantly, the loss of the opera’s fairy‑tale atmosphere inevitably diminished its emotional enchantment. Turandot remains a work in which myth and fantasy are inseparable from psychological truth.
The most controversial decision concerned the ending. Rejecting both Alfano’s completion and Berio’s later alternative, Mahler concluded the opera after Liù’s death before segueing directly into the orchestral Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. She justified the choice through Puccini’s enigmatic notebook annotation, “Poi Tristano”, and the shared E‑flat linking Puccini’s final completed bars with Wagner’s opening. Dramatically, the concept possessed undeniable logic: Calaf no longer conquered Turandot but departed transformed by Liù’s sacrificial love, leaving Turandot to confront herself. The conventional apotheosis gave way to an unresolved meditation on love as a universal rather than personal force.
Whether Wagner belonged at the conclusion of Turandot remained another matter. However ingenious the musicological argument, the Liebestod felt less like an organic conclusion than an appended concert piece. Its central idea—love fulfilled only through death—sat uneasily beside an opera whose conclusion traditionally celebrates love’s triumph over death. The orchestra negotiated the stylistic transition admirably, but the stage action became almost static, and the emotional trajectory, so carefully sustained until Liù’s death, lost much of its dramatic focus. One admired the courage of the experiment more than its ultimate theatrical success.
Musically, however, the evening proved outstanding. Valerio Galli conducted with magnificent authority, revealing Turandot not merely as a spectacular late Romantic score but as a work already pointing towards Expressionism. He balanced overwhelming orchestral power with extraordinary transparency, allowing Puccini’s astonishing harmonic detail, shimmering orchestral colours and impressionistic textures to emerge with remarkable clarity. Climaxes possessed immense dramatic force without ever descending into mere bombast, while the lyrical episodes breathed with exquisite naturalness and flexibility. His pacing was masterly throughout, and even the controversial transition into Wagner displayed considerable musical intelligence.
The Stuttgart State Orchestra responded magnificently, producing playing of exceptional precision and richness. The vast orchestral climaxes retained remarkable clarity, while quieter passages glowed with almost chamber‑like intimacy. Equally impressive was Bernhard Moncado’s preparation of the chorus, whose singing combined overwhelming sonic weight with impeccable rhythmic discipline and astonishing dynamic control. The great crowd scenes acquired genuine Expressionist intensity without sacrificing textual clarity.
Polish soprano Ewa Vesin dominated the stage as Turandot. Her gleaming dramatic soprano possessed exactly the combination of steel, brilliance and dark tonal core required for the role. Never shrill and always securely focused, she negotiated the formidable tessitura with effortless command while gradually revealing the emotional vulnerability concealed beneath the princess’s icy exterior. The omission of the final duet inevitably curtailed the full arc of her characterisation, yet her performance remained vocally magnificent.
Chilean tenor Diego Godoy, on the cusp of a meteoric career, offered an outstanding Calaf, bringing heroic power without succumbing to the vulgar triumphalism that often mars the role. His ringing spinto tenor rose effortlessly above Puccini’s massive orchestration, yet he also found genuine lyricism and warmth where required. “Nessun dorma” emerged not as an exercise in tenor machismo but as an expression of quiet confidence and unwavering conviction, crowned by thrilling yet never forced high notes.
Perhaps the emotional heart of the evening belonged to German lyric soprano Esther Dierkes’s Liù. Singing with luminous tone, generous phrasing and exquisitely floated pianissimi, she transformed the self‑sacrificing slave into the opera’s moral centre. Her torture and death scene achieved devastating emotional intensity precisely because it remained free of sentimentality. Croatian bass Goran Juric brought sonorous authority and profound humanity to a dignified portrayal of Timur, while Shigeo Ishino, Alberto Robert and Joseph Tancredi formed an unusually well-characterised trio of ministers, their nostalgic reminiscences offering genuine moments of lyrical respite amid the surrounding brutality. Jaewoung Lee made an impressive Mandarin, and Heinz Göhrig gave a warmly dignified final première performance as Altoum.
Anna-Sophie Mahler’s Turandot was undeniably provocative and intellectually ambitious. Its dystopian vision offered much to admire, even if its rejection of the opera’s mythical world occasionally diminished the work’s unique enchantment, while the Wagnerian conclusion ultimately remained more thought-provoking than convincing. Yet thanks to Valerio Galli’s magnificent conducting, the superb orchestral playing, Bernhard Moncado’s outstanding chorus and a cast led by the exceptional trio of Ewa Vesin, Diego Godoy and Esther Dierkes, Stuttgart presented a Turandot of rare musical distinction. One might question certain directorial choices, but there could be little doubt that Puccini’s unfinished masterpiece had received a performance of remarkable intelligence, conviction and power.
Ossama el Naggar
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