Love over all

Opera

Rita Kohn

Indianapolis Opera presented 'Turandot' last weekend.

Turandot
Indianapolis Opera
Clowes Hall
May 5 and 7

Indianapolis Opera closed its 30th season with a visually and vocally sumptuous production of Turandot. Lush with lyricism and soaring harmony, Pucinni’s final opera touches the heart in all its emotional capacities in a straightforward retelling of an ancient Chinese fairy tale of revenge taken to extremes.

The IO captured Puccini’s unerring sense of drama with swirling lighting, dazzling costumes and makeup, and awe-inspiring stage properties. Through excellent staging as well as vocal ability, the entire cast imbued fictional characters with dimensional humanity.

The songs enter into us so that we are at one with each, experiencing the range of emotions they feel. Who has not blurted out, as does the faithful slave Liu, a pent-up love for someone who smiled at us? In her gorgeous aria, Stella Zimbalis makes us overlook her stature as an inconsistency with the appellation “little Liu.” Who, like Calaf, has not been consumed with passion with a first glance? Who has not become part of a mindless mob mentality in an atmosphere of fear and repression? Vengeance for the rape of an ancestor fuels Turandot’s single-minded beheading of males who seek her hand in marriage. Her test of three riddles is seemingly unsolvable, yet Calaf is equally single-minded in his intent to win her love and end the reign of terror. Randolph Locke and Lori Phillips are excellent sparring mates.

Thomas Potter, Douglas Perry and Dean Anthony deliver flawlessly as Ping, Pang and Pong, presented as commedia del arte figures reduced to overseeing beheadings, the impending 12th for which the rabble is clamoring. Executioners, priests, mandarins, soldiers, guards, children, shades of the departed and alluring females come and go in endless pageantry on opulent sets wondrously layered like a pop-up picture book. Turandot appears and disappears within a glowing globe curled into a giant dragon’s tail. On a throne set within the mouth of the dragon at the very top of the stage sits the aged emperor, father of Turandot. He, like all the others, tries to dissuade Calaf from the test. When Calaf solves the three riddles, the crowd’s elation bursts from the glorious music. Yet, Calaf is not your run-of-the-mill conqueror. Puccini and his librettists Guiseppe Adami and Renato Simone pre-empted by some 50 years the sensitive-male movement. Calaf’s depth of understanding is on the level of Liu, whose final act of love undermines Turandot’s heartlessness.

Everyone on and off stage contributed magnificently to the two sold-out performances on May 5 and 7 at Clowes Memorial Hall. The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra under James Caraher, delivered beautifully. Stage director John Hoomes’ deft touch for nuances as well as the big picture pleased throughout.

Puccini died before completing the opera. His friend, Franco Alfano, finished the score from the sketches Puccini left. Turandot premiered 80 years ago, April 25, 1926, in Milan.