I have been following the provocative theater creations of Robert Wilson since 1969, when Dance Magazine assigned me to cover The King of Spain, performed at the old Anderson Theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I never quite figured out what to make of it, so I simply followed the guidance of my mentors. I did my best to provide an accurate description of the many bizarre images I had encountered in my allotted column space. The fact that everything unfolded at a very slow pace was a bit taxing, but it meant that I had less to describe in accounting for the entire event! By the time I got around to seeing Wilson’s staging for Einstein on the Beach I was accustomed to his glacial approach to pace and relished the many things I could describe.
At the beginning of this month, Bel Air Classiques released a video in both Blu-ray and DVD formats of a production of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot. This was his first staging of a Puccini opera since 1993, when the Paris Opera had commissioned him to stage a new production of Madama Butterfly. The video was recorded at the Teatro Real in Madrid with the resident orchestra and chorus. The production itself was shared with Canadian Opera Company (based in Toronto), the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, and the Houston Grand Opera. The title role was taken by soprano Iréne Theorin, and The Unknown Prince (Calaf) was sung by tenor Gregory Kunde.
The conductor was Nicola Luisotti, and his presence was one of the factors that drew me to this recording. Luisotti had conducted two different productions of Turandot during his tenure with the San Francisco Opera (SFO), both of which employed the designs of David Hockney. I saw both of them. At the first of them Theorin made her debut in the role of Turandot. Thus, while the visuals that Wilson conceived differed radically from those of Hockney, the musical experience felt a bit like a “homecoming” for me. Indeed, regardless of any of the staging factors, Luisotti once again dazzled with his intense and perfectly-paced account of the score; and his chemistry with Theorin registered as powerfully as it had in the War Memorial Opera House.
That said, Wilson has definitely not lost his talent for provocation. He is a stickler for detail, and even the slight rotation of a ceremonial staff is precisely specified. He is also inclined to placing key characters in awkward (usually highly elevated) positions. The throne for the Emperor Altoum (tenor Raul Giménez) seems to have been inspired by a garden swing; and he looks down on everyone from a dizzying height. Similarly, Turandot first appears and the end of what looks like an extremely elevated diving board. That visual was selected for the design of the album cover:
from the Amazon.com Web page for the DVD packaging of the recording being discussed
In the staging itself, Wilson seems to have taken more interest in the secondary characters than in the “leading roles,” perhaps because he figures that the audience already knows what they need to know about Turandot and Calaf. As a result, most of his attention went into Ping (baritone Joan Martín-Royo), Pang (tenor Vicenç Esteve), and Pong (tenor Juan Antonio Sanabria). (I was reminded of a New Yorker review of Frederic Ashton’s choreography for Cinderella, calling it a tale about two very droll old maids that happen to have a beautiful stepsister, who goes to a ball and marries a prince.) Granted, Ping, Pang, and Pong are the only vestiges of the commedia dell’arte origins of the narrative supplied by Carlo Gozzi. In this case, however, I have to say that, whatever interests Wilson may still have in minimalism, his treatment of them approached (if not crossed) the brink of excessiveness.
My guess is that many will dismiss this production as making too much out of too few ingredients. Since I am used to Wilson’s style, my own patience only began to wane towards the end; but that is basically the part with the music written by Franco Alfano after Puccini died before completing the score. Traditionalists will probably feel far more frustrated by this viewing experience than I did.
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