While the rest of the world pays lip service to equal opportunity, Slovakia is quietly producing a generation of strong female film and stage directors. Prague audiences have been fortunate to see two of the best currently working in opera – Sláva Daubnerová, whose no-holds-barred Lolita added a dark beauty to this season, and Zuzana Gilhuus, with a prescient take on Turandot. Both would be better described as auteurs, directors with a vision that incorporates every aspect of a piece, from dramatic arc to design.
Gilhuusʼ strength is visual impact, starting with the opening scene of Turandot, which places the chorus in a pit, like a muddy river of the lowest caste beneath a shining bridge, surrounded by pole-wielding male dancers. The effect is abstract with an Eastern flavor, and the dramatic lighting – bright spots on singers otherwise enveloped in darkness – sets a foreboding tone. Winning a princessʼ hand may be in the offing, but itʼs immediately clear that this is a grim, life-or-death endeavor.
Gilhuus is particularly adept at using visuals as metaphors. Emperor Altoum appears in the second act as a remote figure atop a towering, brilliant white robe framed by a sun that would put Louis XIV to shame. Or is it a stylized chrysanthemum? Metaphors can be as confusing as they are revealing, especially in this production. When a white-powdered man wearing nothing but a loincloth does an interpretive dance across the bridge in the first act, is it a symbolic comment or the Prince of Persia on his way to the chopping block? He proves to be the latter, though only the first of many dancers who flit across the stage like dreams, half-real, half-imagined.
This tends to obscure the narrative – not a serious problem in such a well-known piece, perhaps, but indicative of deeper deficiencies in nuance and pacing. Gilhuusʼ predilection with visuals flattens the entire production into 2D: the characters are cardboard, emotions seem artificial, and the action moves at a steady unbroken clip, like watching a film reel unspool. The riddles in the second act dictate a different, more dramatic rhythm, and the denouement demands some emotional interaction. Otherwise, the singers seem captives of the striking sets.
The elaborate staging also creates some mechanical problems, as key scenes have to be played in front of a closed curtain to accommodate set changes. This doesnʼt effect the antics of Ping, Pang and Pong, but it isolates the reconciliation of Calaf and Turandot, whose great romantic moment unfolds in a relatively stark, sterile setting. And by then, Gilhuus seems to have run out of ideas. The curtain opens to reveal a milling crowd on an otherwise bare stage, and when the crowd parts, Calaf and Turandot retreat upstage for a final embrace in front of a blank white screen.