Turandot
Giacomo Puccini's last opera Turandot , based on Carlo Gozzi, is set in a fairytale-like, gloomy China. A repressive social order prevails there, which crystallizes in the bloody revenge rite of Princess Turandot: Turandot attracts crowds of suitors with her cold beauty and then delivers them to the executioner by means of unsolvable riddles. Until one day the dethroned Tatar king Timur, his son, Prince Calaf, and the slave Liù appear: Undaunted, Calaf faces the three riddles of the cruel princess, solves them and is rewarded with her love in the end.
Puccini's unfinished score impresses with its refined exoticism and a skilful mixture of tragedy and bizarre wit. It spans the arc from pompous mass scenes to passionate pathos between Turandot and Calaf to the characters Ping, Pang and Pong, which go back to the Commedia dell'arte. Martina Serafin, one of today's great Turandots, returns to the Zurich Opera House. She recently sang the cruel princess with great success at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago and before that in the Arena di Verona. Guanqun Yu, the Mimì in our Bohème , sings the self-sacrificing Liù, Aleksanders Antonenko, last seen in Zurich as Radames in Aida and Hermann in Pique Dame,sings Calaf. Giampaolo Bisanti takes over the musical direction.
