Poster of the year: Turandot, by Verdi
mainThis just went up in the streets of Budapest.
Since the top of the picture gets cropped on our page, you can see here that it announces Giuseppe Verdi’s Turandot.
It also omits to announce who is singing the role of Turandot.
In all fairness, Turandot is only a peripheral character. Had Puccini lived longer, that would be different, but as it is, the two protagonists are Calaf and Liu. I am assuming that they are pulling a “Toscanini” and stopping the performance right after Liu’ death. 🙂
Highly insulting to the title character. But this is the hegemony of marketing in opera and classical music today for you. It’s a free for all in artistically desperate times.
Has no one told them? Surely it had to be “approved” before it went to print…SOMEONE must have seen it. I pity the outfit that has that at the publicity helm…!
In Verdi’s Turandot, the role of the Princess is silent and secondary — Calaf and Liu elope to Mallorca.
I remember seeing a poster outside the Met. Forget what but Alberto Vilar’s name and Jimmy Levine’s were huge and Verdi’s in small print at the bottom.
Knowledgeable proofreaders: a dying (if not already dead) breed.
I find this to be a great pity….
Look, it’s Jose Cura after all. It could very well be a new hybrid coupling the Gozzi play with the music drawn from Verdi’s many scores. As the Royal Ballet does with Massenet so often.
Earlier today on Sirius XM Classical 76 I heard the anncr state that probably the most famous opera is one by Rossini – The Marriage of Figaro