One of the big dates in the history of Puccini’s operas was 1994. That was the year his music came out of copyright, relieving opera companies of payments on some of their most bankable sellers.
In the case of his last opera, Turandot, there is a further twist. Puccini died before he could finish the score and it fell to Franco Alfano to produce a final scene based on Puccini’s sketches. As Alfano died in 1954, his completion also went out of copyright last year.
At the Royal Opera, that must rank as a piece of good news, as the company’s showpiece production of Turandot has been a cash cow for the past 40 years. Produced for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, it offers its own distinctive kind of spectacle, not to mention some exceptionally atmospheric lighting.
At this revival — 10 performances lasting into mid-April — the production seems barely to have aged. The musical styles served up by Puccini, a mix of Italian verismo with tart, Stravinsky-like sounds and chinoiserie, are neatly reflected in the staging’s blend of Chinese opera and Italian commedia dell’arte.
There must be a finite number of singers who can surmount the two lead roles, but the Royal Opera has succeeded in delivering another good cast. Sondra Radvanovsky gave notice of her claim to the title role when she recorded it with former Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano. Live in the theatre, she makes a big impression with her fearless singing, the sheer decibels she is flinging into the auditorium masking the unevennesses in her voice. Few Turandots crumple more visibly on losing the test of the riddles or come back with more imposing stature.
SeokJong Baek has come on a lot since he stepped in to sing Samson in the Royal Opera’s 2022 production of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila. Formerly a baritone, Baek sounds as if nature always intended him as a tenor, all Calaf’s ringing top notes firmly in place. He has settled into a good balance between vocal strength and a well-schooled musicality, though it was naughty of him to greet his victory in the riddles with a run of high Cs that Puccini never wrote.
As Liù, Anna Princeva offers singing that is nice as far as it goes, with the right kind of fragile, bright sound, but those lovely, floating top notes that Puccini made such a feature of the role — the “money notes”, as they are called in the business — did not always go as she would have liked.
Ossian Huskinson’s Mandarin starts the opera off with his proudly resonant proclamation. Adam Palka finds nobility in the suffering Timur. Hansung Yoo’s well-sung Ping again leads the commedia dell’arte trio. Above all, Rafael Payare conducts a vivid performance, strong on rhythm and colour and projection. Please note that a second cast takes over some later performances.
★★★★☆
To April 19, rbo.org.uk