In my article on the Met’s revival of the Schenk/Schneider-Siemssen Die Meistersinger (see the post of 11/12/21), I promised a consideration of the current season’s second high-density extravaganza of several decades’ standing, the Turandot originally designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli in 1987. Since there is little of artistic importance to report about the evening (of Nov. 2), and most of that consists of sketching its vocal shortcomings, it has seemed to me more productive to share some thoughts about how we think of these roles (shortcomings by what standard?), and how we feel about this opera (what’s that queasy sensation?) when not swept away by its thrill potential. A brief evaluation of the present revival can be found at the end of today’s article.

In search of a standard.

For operagoers of my generation, the measure of the work’s effectiveness was taken by the protagonist pairing of the Met’s 1961 production, Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli. The sheer visceral excitement and aesthetic entrancement generated by those two justified the opera’s continuance for the next decade, and became the remembrance to which successors were compared. In the first seasons of that production, Nilsson remained a fixture except on the rare occasion, while Corelli had plausible alternates in Richard Tucker, Sándor Kónya, and Flaviano Labò. Also early on, the third principal character, Liù, was sung by Anna Moffo, Lucine Amara, Teresa Stratas, Licia Albanese, and, on just a couple of  memorable occasions, Leontyne Price. Those were the voices that reinstated this opera in the Met’s repertory after the company’s first production of it had worn out its welcome thirty-one years earlier.

Puccini’s stated choices for the three principal roles in Turandot were: Turandot: Maria Jeritza; Calaf: Beniamino Gigli; Liù: Gilda dalla Rizza. But the singers eventually contracted for the parts  were, respectively, Rosa Raisa, Miguel Fleta, and Maria Zamboni, the last-named a late substitution for Edith Mason. (By the time of the premiere—4/25/26, at La Scala—Puccini had been dead for nearly a year and a half, and Toscanini was very much in charge of the artistic decisions. But he was aware of Puccini’s preferences, which had evidently included the eventual “creators” as credible substitutions.) With later casting selections in our ears, several of these can seem surprising to us. So a glance at them should be of interest.

Jeritza/Raisa: Two quite different singers, neither of them Italian. But then, Italy was not really rich in dramatic sopranos at that time (the most tonally and technically complete of them, Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, was just emerging from her contralto beginnings, and not yet established as a dramatic soprano); Gina Cigna, who later sang the role on the opera’s first complete recording, was just getting started, too. The most logical native candidate would have been Bianca Scacciati, who did go on to “create” the role for both Rome and London shortly after the world premiere. She had a big, cutting voice, intensely vibrated and prevailingly bright, that certainly encompassed the part’s range, and her recording of “In questa reggia” is persuasive. But Puccini knew what he wanted, namely, the hot temperament, theatricality, emotionality, and sheer glamor of Jeritza, whom he’d seen often in Strauss, Wagner, and his own operas, above all Tosca. That she was not particularly Italianate in either vocal method or pronuncia, and could be wayward musically, was obviously of secondary importance to him. (He was also  a fervent admirer of Jeritza’s frequent colleague/competitor Lotte Lehmann, another emotionally open singer who could be musically adrift at times. He knew what the priorities must be for his music and characters.) Jeritza’s was another essentially bright voice, its vibrato not nearly as prominent as Scacciati’s, its calibre of the Jugendlich variety as then defined (i. e., stronger than the singers we hear in such roles now), its tone capable of purity when not being flung about. The Polish soprano Raisa I have always found difficult to pin down from her records. Her voice is often enough described as voluminous to establish that as one of its components. Even allowing for the change from acoustical to electric recording technology, her singing seems to have undergone more than the normal timbral and technical alteration over the duration of her career—taut and sometimes brittle early on, more loosely held and not as firmly centered toward the top later. Very impressive passages are followed by unfocused ones. Clearly not as glamorous or demonstrative as Jeritza, she nevertheless apparently had true prima donna presence, and the vocal calibre and range for the part. Toscanini had thought highly of her since leading her in the premiere of Boito’s Nerone in May of 1924, and her performance in Turandot was considered nearly ideal by musicians and critics. Both these sopranos left significant American trails in this role, Jeritza for the entire four-season run of the Met’s first production, and Raisa in Chicago, where she was for many years the reigning dramatic soprano. Though they also left extensive discographies, neither recorded anything from Turandot.