Organization

Admin

National Theatre Prague

Conductor

Andrea Sanguineti

Stage director

Stage director (+3)

Zuzana Gilhuus

Set designer

Costume designer

Boris Hanečka

Choreographer

Actor (+4)

Martin Dvorak

Lighting designer

Martin Bronec

Chorusmaster

Pavel Vaněk

Soprano (+2)

Ewa Vesin

Turandot

Soprano (+1)

Maida Hundeling

Bass-baritone (+3)

František Zahradníček

Timur

Bass (+3)

Jiří Sulženko

Tenor (+1)

Alejandro Roy

Calaf

Alžběta Poláčková

Liù

Baritone (+6)

Jiří Hájek

Ping

Baritone (+4)

Jiří Brückler

Tenor (+6)

Jaroslav Březina

Pang

Tenor (+2)

Josef Moravec

Pong

Martin Šrejma

Miloš Horák

A Mandarin

Tenor

Jan Vacík

The Emperor Altoum

Tenor (+5)

Jan Ježek

Marek Lhotsky

The Prince of Persia

Orchestra

Prague National Opera Orchestra

Chorus

Kühn Choir of Prague

Prague National Theatre Chorus

The Prague Philharmonic Children's Choir

Ballet

The Czech National Ballet

Národní divadlo (National Theatre)

Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, may be deemed to be the “last of the Mohicans” of the Golden Age of Italian Romantic opera. The greatest of Verdi’s heirs, the composer, however, did not get bogged down in this tradition, but went on to boldly develop and enrich it with the flavours of the new artistic styles that emerged in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. Consequently, his Turandot, written between and 1921 and 1924, does not feature many Romantic traits.

Puccini based the opera on the eponymous commedia dell’arte play by Carlo Gozzi, an author much admired by the early 20th-century avant-garde artists. The subject hails from Persia or Mongolia, whose cultures were mainly marvelled at by votaries of the decorative style, while the libretto’s story is set in medieval Beijing and foregrounds fairy-tale, or better said mythological, elements, favoured by the Symbolists. The theme of passionate love, essential for Romantic opera, is veiled in mysterious motifs of ice, fire, moon, while an erotic flame enigmatically blazes along with intense, unrelenting hatred, which we would rather expect to be present in works inspired by decadence or psychoanalysis.

Yet all that which, notwithstanding its modernism, gives Turandot the Romantic opera hallmark is Puccini’s musical idiom, which too encompasses plenty of “eccentric” facets – ranging from Oriental paraphrases, through a brutal orchestral sound, dissonant harmonies to wildly complex chorus and ensemble scenes – but what prevails is Puccini’s masterful melodic invention in the spirit of the legacy of his great Italian opera predecessors, yet utterly original – by and large, Puccinian.

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