So the “facts” don’t prove anything definitively, and the question becomes which choice is the psychologically more powerful one, the one that builds the strongest backstory for the performers to work with, as in the one provided for Turandot below. (And this question is of at least as much hormonal/psychological significance, as much one of personal morality and honor, for Edgardo as for Lucia.) Is the pressure-cooker stress of repressed sexual passion a stronger motivation for the actions shown? Or is it the broken personal vows, the tearing apart of sexual involvement at its height, along with the terror of revelation on the wedding night, with calamitous consequences for all? For me, the deciding factor is one of Romantic aesthetics and psychology, according to which it is the longing for consummation, the agony of separation without it, and the tragedy of true love denied, forever impeded, that is the generative force. But either way, the influence of the choice strongly colors every detail of the protagonists’ relationship, and ideally would be reflected in both vocal inflection and physical behavior. These differences might be subtle and perceived by receptors in largely subliminal ways, but they would be there, feeding the suspenseful progression of the drama, and lending impetus, specificity, to the singing-acting of the performers. That’s what singing-acting is all about.

Of course, in Stone’s world of auteurial subjectivity, this question is resolved, like it or not, literally above the performers’ heads, for at the end of Act 1, Scene 2, they tumble into the motel bed, and obviously not for the first time. Whichever romantic balloon might have been inflated has popped, and of all the given question’s implications, only the hormonal remains.

˜ ˜ ˜

My primary motive for returning for a seasonal second look and listen to the old Zeffirelli production of Turandot (see Musings on Turandot, 12/31/21) was the prospect of a cast that promised at least a modest upgrade on that of the first go-round, bearing in mind that while a production like this one may not do much to illuminate a work for us, it will at least not stand in the way of performers taking hold of it in a manner that approximates its creators’ specifications. But a secondary factor was the quality of response from some of my readers. This problematic, end-of-a-canonical-line opera clearly exerts a fascination on thoughtful devotees. So before giving you a brief report on the performance, I’ll engage with a few of these responses, and in the process try to clarify one or two aspects of Franco Alfano’s attempted solution for the final scene.

Unsurprisingly, most of the reaction centered on my moral reservations about the work. But even those who share them also noted Turandot‘s potential for doing what E-19 opera is designed to do, namely, sweep us into a sensory/emotional involvement that allows us to consider, contemplate, or analyze only after the fact. A critical colleague of long experience remarked that “When Nilsson and Corelli were in it, I didn’t worry about it at all,” and another reader, acknowledging the same effect, called it “a wonderment based on those particular singers, and not on the intended plight of the main characters.” Yes. But that is still something that belongs to the work itself, part of what it’s set up to do. It’s supposed to be sung to such effect, and undoubtedly was by some of the pairings that preceded the Nilsson/Corelli one. Eugene Schiller, out at Hawaii Public Radio, felt that my moral strictures had given Calàf “short shrift. Why,” he asks, “should he be different from hundreds of others who have risked their lives in pursuit of her [Turandot]?” And Eugene goes on to note that Calàf could not have anticipated Liù’s suicide; that he upbraids Turandot as the “Principessa di morte;” and that with the alliance of Calàf and Turandot, “Timur will live out his life in royal luxury, thanks to his son.” These observations are all true as far as they go, and are things I imagine we are intended to latch onto as “guilty with explanation” arguments to quiet the conscience on Calàf’s behalf. For me, though, they don’t add up to exculpation. My answer to the first question would be twofold: first, that our tenor protagonist must be different from all those others (that’s what qualifies him as the chivalric hero of the tale, and the reason the opera’s about him, rather than one of them); and second, that the “hundreds of others” (well, many) suggests the levels-of-reality problem I alluded to in my piece. The seemingly endless chain of decapitated suitors (Calàf will be the thirteenth, we are told, in this Year of the Tiger), along with the grindstone that never rests, the China of seventy-thousand centuries, etc.,—all these come from the realm of fable; they aren’t part of any recognizably “realistic” world. The language (especially the musical language) of Puccini’s opera, on the other hand, is that of late romantic realism, in which we are meant to invest emotionally in the lives and actions of the individual characters, and, thus, evaluate the moral implications of their actions accordingly. To Eugene’s other points, I’d respond that the spectacle of Liù’s physical and mental torture really should be quite enough to summon a heroic/sacrificial reaction; that a single condemnatory line at the top of the scene of conquest doesn’t quite balance the ethical scales for me (in fact, I hear it as much as a spur to excited foreplay as anything else); and that we hope the imperial messenger is swift enough to overtake Timur’s head start and escort him back along the road of exile. We all want reasons to feel comfortable with enjoying, being uplifted by, the last Italian opera that has genius in it. Greatvoiced singing of unusual brilliance is the only one I’ve been able to find.