Turandot

With his last opera - left incomplete with his death in 1924 and finished by Franco Alfano– Giacomo Puccini took an ambitious step in the adaptation of his style to the new currents in music which evolved after the Great War.  As a point of departure, the composer took a piece of the 17th century Commedia dell’Arte Del, to advance in a direction that pointed unequivocally – but without forsaking it own identity– to the author of The Rites of Spring. As a result, in Turandot  there coexist the melodic intensity of its arias –«Nessun dorma»–,  the echo of Chinese popular  songs —«Mòlìhuā» or «Jasmine Theme »—,  characters from  the puppet theatre –Ping, Pang and Pong–  along with instrumentation and colourful tribal rhythms that definitely beat  from Stravinsky.

Yet, Turandot is also –as is The Rites of Spring– a grandiose ritual of fertility in which, by way of the ceremony of the three enigmas – plus a fourth–, the sexual act is no longer a brutal demonstration of male dominance, but one that transforms into an amorous encounter of mutual consent. It is along this line – ritualistic and symbolic – that the stylized stage production by Robert Wilson returns to the Teatro Real – as the culmination of the season –   which we had the opportunity to see four seasons ago.