The Met gets tangled up in Turandot warnings
OperaThe NY Post reports that New York’s Metropolitan Opera has added a warning to Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, informing audiences that the 1926 opera ‘is rife with contradictions, distortions, and racial stereotypes … It shouldn’t be surprising . . . that many audience members of Chinese descent find it difficult to watch as their own heritage is co-opted, fetishized, or painted as savage, bloodthirsty, or backward.’
The Post quotes Norman Lebrecht, dismissing the trigger warning as ‘manufactured racial exasperation’ that will only serve to kill the box-office.
Read more here.
Here’s is the full trigger paragraph, by Christopher Bronwer, the Met’s associate editor:
We must also consider the criticisms that Turandot—and Puccini’s appropriation, reconfiguration, and reharmonization of Chinese music—has received in recent years. As Ping-hui Liao, a professor of literary and critical studies at the University of California, San Diego, argues, despite the composer’s attempts at authenticity, “when the material is drawn from another culture, as in the case of Madama Butterfly or Turandot, it is integrated and ordered so that it becomes intelligible, controlled, and agreeable … the melodies are so well integrated that they lose their own autonomy and become part of a larger whole. In distinguishing between East and West, [Puccini] makes the former subservient to the latter.” Or, as Carner wryly suggests, while the Chinese characters don “national musical costume throughout … this costume may bear the trademark ‘Made in Italy.’” It shouldn’t be surprising then that many audience members of Chinese descent find it difficult to watch as their own heritage is co-opted, fetishized, or painted as savage, bloodthirsty, or backward.
And here’s my full comment to the Post:
There is a growing consensus among theatre people that trigger warnings are killing ticket sales. If I was warned that something was about to insult my heritage, intelligence or political sympathies, I would think three times at the very least before presenting my credit card.
Trigger warnings exist to cover the heightened legal anxieties of theatre administrators and the lately-inflated sensitivities of underpaid auxiliaries. They are bad for business and they should be scrapped.
As to Zeffirelli’s Turandot, I was monumentally insulted by its million-dollar extravagance, by its eye-watering lighting dazzle, by the preposterous storyline and by the harmonic inadequacy of its pseudo-pentatonic score. I was so affronted by all of these that I really didn’t have the brain space to be bothered by any manufactured racial exasperation. I went home whistling the decor.
Go see it.
What is a trugger warning?
trigger, not trugger
Trigger is the name of Puccini’s dog. Methinks.
I am insulted by the trigger warnings, but anything the Met does these days, as the leading Wokester in the world, makes me laugh.
Not one dollar/euro to such a pathetic political clown.
What’s the problem with warnings? As a genuine question!
With characters named “Ping” and “Pong”, It’s definitely a work of its time, like old TV shows and films. Is it so bad to warn people about something that may be offensive to them??
And does a brief probably unobtrusive warning really impede enjoyment of the piece for anyone else?
Because nobody is actually offended by this, so a trigger warning is unnecessary virtue signaling
Just saying- because you aren’t actually offended, doesn’t mean a lot of Asian’s aren’t. Turondot is an incredibly racially offensive representation of an “Asian Dragon” Lady no matter how you want to parse it
I’d be curious as to what you think is an inoffensive representation of an ‘Asian Dragon Lady’. If one listens to ‘In questa regia’ & understands the text, one can easily understand why Turandot is like she is, does what she does. She not only wants to avenge her beloved ancestor, more importantly, she wants to make sure she doesn’t end up like her. She uses her privilege to her advantage. She has also worked at closing her heart to the dangers of love. However, Liu manages to get through to her & make her reconsider. Like Puccini, I’m not so convinced she willingly falls for arrogant Calaf – but love can make fools of us all.
Many female friends of mine have sympathy for Turandot. The Chinese men who have watched the opera with me liked it [we’ve watched the video of the Italian/Chinese co-production set in the Forbidden City], appreciated hearing a familiar folk melody – & seemed to appreciate the politics & romance better than most Westerners!
But Turandot is not a real person, it’s a character in an opera. The existence of an R in her name should signal that right at the start.
“Nobody is actually offended by this”? I guess you don’t know any 20-somethings.
They will grow up. Their frontal cortex will mature before they’re 30.
Don’t worry! People of Asian descent (including myself) are not so prickly. We can distinguish fact from myth.
The Mascagni opera IRIS, set in Japan, has characters named “Osaka” and “Kyoto,” but it’s not performed often enough to foster comments.
I think you should go to see a shrink which has become normal in Donald Trump county
Aren’t you all insane
I don’t know about Pong but Ping is a normal Chinese name since centuries.
If there still were Puccini’s heirs entitled to watch over moral rights, they should be suing for defamation.
The last Puccini heir died 6 years ago.
Have they issued a warning to people of Japanese descent about “Madame Butterfly?”
god forbid!
I believe so, if it is even performed anymore.
Good God. I guess Peter Gelb is doing a Liu and decided to stab himself. At least she did it in front; Peter’s misguided decisions (probably prodded by an over-promoted and over-paid Chief Diversity Officer) are stabbing the Met in the back.
I didn’t think I’d live to see the demise of the Met. I was wrong.
Another manufactured controversy by the right-wing NY Post.
Opera companies have been adding content warnings to their shows for years. Someone should point the reporter to the Seattle Opera, where most of their shows have them. I believe Dallas does this as well. You get ratings on movies, why not opera?
Because it is getting ridiculous, even for movies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/arts/mary-poppins-age-rating-uk.html
Because a “rating” and a “trigger warning” are not the same thing.
Why I no longer go to the opera.
It’s not a trugger warning, they’re programme notes.
Trugger warnings that will onlt serve to kill the box office? Articulate and humble as always is Mr Lebrecht.
The first time I saw Turandot, I was shocked by how racist it was! It’s a beautiful piece of art, should still be performed, but it’s not a bad idea to let audiences know beforehand that’s there some crazy stuff in there.
I recommended all my Chinese friends in NY to see the show and be offended.
Sally
As if China never had emperors and empresses. Learn some history.
Wow, throwing your own ignorance right back into someone’s face.
just don’t go and watch Fox News instead
Also this quote:
“Turandot has fictional Chinese characters. If that bothers you, stay away,” he added.” is ridiculously stupid.
Let’s be snobs about opera and keep as many people away from it as possible. Don’t you know it’s a thriving art form across America and no opera company is having financial issues? Pretty sure all operas performed in the U.S. have 100% attendance.
No let’s just keep stupid people away. Just stupid people.
A research project at the Texas Institute of Technology has devised a filter method to get only the right people into an opera house. Both when customers order tickets online and at the entrance before the performance, a questionaire with multiple choice boxes has to be filled-out:
Have you been at an opera before and if so, could you follow the plot?
0 yes
0 no
0 don’t know
0 what is a plot?
What was your focus of attention?
0 plot
0 music
0 singers
0 female audience members
0 male audience members
0 transgender audience members
0 seats
0 my neighbour
0 worry about bathroom visit
0 my hair
Have you prepared for your visit, i.e. read about the work(s), the performers, the composer?
0 Why should I?
0 Never time
0 No, I’m there for an outing, not schoolwork
0 Could not care less
0 I have read everything about it, so will stay at home
According to Dr Hofstadter, leader of the project, this would weed-out unwanted visitors. The report has been duly sent to every opera house in the US but no singe one wanted to put it into practice.
you mean like those stupid ones who comment here?
These people are beyond pathetic.
Who, the reactionary editors of the New York Post who drum up “nontroversies” to make their knuckle-dragging readers think the world is being overtaken by progressives?
I’d personally argue that it’s time to retire outdated works like this, just as we’ve put to rest many old movies with racist stereotypes. But the Met isn’t doing that; it’s just warning people what they’ll encounter.
If we are to “retire” works because they are in some respect or other “outdated” or may have elements judged offensive or “triggering” to one or another ethnic, racial, or other identity group, we would have to retire many if not most of the literary, theatrical, and musical works of the past. Is such a prospect in any way desirable?
The only warning Turandot needs is a high noise warning for in questa reggia
Not with today’s sopranos you don’t. Rare are those with a voice that can fill the Met. Of this production’s Turandot, the NYT helpfully suggested: “. She did such lovely work in the role’s lower-lying parts that one could forgive her lack of impact in the high notes in the riddle scene.”
Not bad advice overall, forgiveness, of both the opera and the singers.
Even by the usual low standard for editorial rigor on this site, umm, did a chimp type this one??
That’s funny. My Chinese friends all think Turandot is a great ITALIAN opera and would laugh at the woke leaflet insert. Fyi Turandot is actually a Persian princess and I don’t see any Iranians protesting her extremist character.
Yes, exactly on the nose with the Persian Princess, thank you.
The Schiller play that inspired Puccini was possibly based on stories from Middle Eastern mythology. There is more to that involving previous adaptations and translations of the Persian stories if anyone wants to know more.
The point is context. If there is a need to reassess many of these works could there be more focus in providing context? Not just the plot, but what we can ascertain about the composers’ intentions in the time that it was written and what it meant in that era.
I think that one comment here drew attention to the fact that at the time different cultures were distant lands. Real in their actual existence and real to the few that could have visited them, but imaginative to most. Even with modern technology one cannot begin to understand other cultures with one or two casual visits and/or online research and whatever documentaries (which are still from the POV of the documentarian) people seem to think are informative. We may be more immersed today living amongst people of different cultures which informs all of us how much more there is to discover about them.
There is all kinds of context surrounding the new works being presented and yes, of course, one reason being that the creatives involved are alive. Puccini in Turandot was expanding the musical palette by incorporating his interpretation of sounds of the East region. Possibly new-ish (in this genre) and (in his mind) representational sounds!
We all know that music is sound, all kinds of sound. Not just new and important stories and trying to fit them into the same sounds and orchestrations. Can we not try and link together how everything influences and illuminates rather than excludes and stereotypes? (Stereotype is becoming a problematic and possibly misleading term.) Puccini was illuminating. Surely there is context here to be understood.
Lincoln Center is going so far the include that it is beginning to exclude. Maybe this is a natural tipping of the scales that will find a balance. A trigger warning in this case is just another use of words that don’t really have any useful meaning. A rebranding in an attempt to redefine something using words and acronyms that are being created by whom exactly?
All of this rebranding and redefining seems disposable and has an expiration date of maybe 24 hours, like the daily edition.
Sorry, long post.
My fly on the wall tells me that some Iranians, living in Iran and running the country, actually greatly approve of the plot.
Actually, she is a Chinese princess; it is the suitor Calaf who is Persian.
Schiller’s version is Turandot, Prinzessin von China.
Incorrect. Turandot aka Turan-dokht in Farsi literally means “daughter of Turan”, Turan being a part of the Persian Empire.
Calaf is Mandarin Chinese.
No doubt you are etymologically correct. But in Schiller and in Puccini’s libretto Turandot is a Chinese princess. It is a Persian prince who is beheaded in Act 1 of the opera; Calaf is the son of Timur, the Tartar king (so not Persian, my mistake).
In Schiller and Puccini Turandot is a Chinese princess but it does not mean that it is Chinese cultural heritage! And it is not just an etymological fact. The whole discussion is such nonsense. If you think it through to the end, it is the end of every culture.
If it is racist, then why is the Met performing it? Then again, they had no problem producing an opera that glorifies a Jew-hater.
Obviously, it was only a matter of time before Turandot came under scrutiny, and will, probably, be canceled in the near future. Madama Butterfly will, no doubt, follow, unless all the Japanese references are erased. Actually, any opera with ethnic content should be deleted from the repertoire for fear of offending someone. Canadian Opera Company was well ahead when they renamed Ping, Pong and Pang John, Bob, and Bill in Robert Wilson’s Turandot a number of years ago
He agreed to the changes, surprisingly.
Goodbye Abduction from the Seraglio, mortally offensive to Turkey, L’Italiana in Algeri, Pearl Fishers, and many others. See you all on DVD.
I find the insertion of characters called John, Bob and Bill seriously offensive — aesthetically — in this particular story. Good God Almighty, do these people think we are all infants who cannot understand the theatrical?
Good luck renaming the characters in The Mikado and retaining the remotest resemblance to a light opera that has entertained people the world over on a regular basis since its inception.
I wish all the types behind this sort of rubbish would just grow up, and look around and read a little and LEARN something about anything at all before criticising it.
I too, like to invent cancellation stories just so I have something to be outraged about.
The fact this has not happened can only mean one thing: it will happen in the future. That’s how history works, after all.
By the way, did I miss the part where the MET de-programmed Turandot to replace it only with a programme note? No? They’re still performing it in a massive historical production? Ah.
I’d like the see a trigger warning on Abduction from the Seraglio have something like this in it: “This opera was written 100 years after the colonizing Turks were defeated at the gates of Vienna.”
Anything that begins with “the New York Post” is already a trigger warning is it not? On the other hand they did find an expert at “manufacturing exasperation”…
Lol. Don’t forget to say sorry for that – otherwise you will be racists!
Opera lovers are doomed. On one side of the pond there is wokeness gone amok. On the other side, Eurotrash dominates.
Pick your poison.
And what do you want? Some old stuffy, dusty and nostalgic BS ‘it was always better in the past’ antique, romantic nonsense that makes you feel cozy and superior? If opera doesn’t evolve and engage with modern times it dies… It evolved over previous centuries, why should it dig in and refuse to adapt now? If it doesn’t it dies when you do.
Yes, but that should also go for ANY piece of music. So: adapt Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart etc. etc. to our modern needs because they are so much more important than what any composer had in mind.
Art can go out of fashion, especially as attitudes and sensibilities change over time. Some stereotypical characters in theatre become caricatures over time, and are dismissed as such. The opera public is sophisticated enough not to be offended by naive depictions created for dramatic purposes.
Perhaps a nice counterpoint would be to perform Chinese opera for Western audiences performed by Chinese singers.
Here’s a solution if you’re triggered by content warnings: don’t read them.
In fact, on the MET website, you have to deliberately click a link that says “Click here to read the program note, which includes a discussion of the opera’s cultural insensitivities” to read it.
All this is about people who decided to click an extra link just so they could get outraged.
The solution obviously is: offer trigger warnings about trigger warnings.
Spell check much?
What a load of codswallop. This is a fabulous production, and the Turandot story is in fact Persian, not Chinese – as if that mattered. Most of Shakespeare’s plays would never be performed if this sort of nonsense became the norm.
No kidding. First thing I thought of was what would these clowns have to say about Macbeth.
And the entire Jacobean revenge tragedy canon, including if not especially Titus Andronicus.
And as for Gilbert and Sullivan…particularly The Mikado…
Did you miss the part where they are performing Turandot, not cancelling it?
Well, their chief diversity officer has to earn her keep and no doubt big salary. She reports directly to Gelb, so all of the woke crap has been approved by him. Wonder if Malcom X will have trigger warnings for white folks.
How absolutely ridiculous! I suppose next on their warning list will be about negative stereotypes of Japanese in Madama Butterfly and Scots in Lucia. It’s opera! Drama! A story! Not a documentary! Were there warnings outside theatres about certain Chinese practices at David Henry Huang’s excellent play M Butterfly? Or about conflicting theories in Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus? Stupid questions!
Ummm…yes? Have you never read a program for the Magic Flute that discusses why Masonic imagery was important for Mozart and his time? Or why Donizetti was drawn to Walter Scott? Or why there are drums, cymbals, and “Turkish” instruments in Die Entführung aus dem Serail?
Historical contextual essays are part of literally every opera program, ever.
The basic problem: In older days, before routine worldwide travel and instant communication from everywhere about everything, people in one place had this concept of other places as being “far,” and people with one set of traditions and customs tended to think of other traditions and customs as “different.”
Strange as it seems to the enlightened present, “distance” and “difference” sometimes aroused curiosity and interest. This resulted in artworks that were then fascinating, but can now be understood as racist, foolish, and worthless. All gain, right?
Rot. The Japanese have no problem with The Mikado, and I doubt the Chinese have any with Turandot. The problems exist in the minds of Americans and, increasingly, the British. Of the woke persuasion. Astonishing in the latter, which had up to recently had the most evolved theatrical culture in the world.
At Aspen’s Falstaff production a few summers ago, the line “Affiderei… la mia bottiglia d’acquavita a un Turco” was changed in the supertitles to “I’d give my whiskey to an Irishman.” Never mind the fact that when the opera was written, Turkey was an imperial power while Ireland was a colony recovering from a famine that killed a million people and led another million to emigrate. But hey, they’re white.
How ridiculous. I have played three productions of Turandot in CHINA, in Beijing and in Shanghai, and nobody has felt the need to explain to the public that it’s fiction theatre and not distorted reality.
Americans are really going bonkers.
And too many Brits are copying them.
I am looking forward to the CBSO’s end-of-season concert performance of Madam Butterfly, conducted by their Chief Conductor Kazuki Yamada, who I think chose this work.
https://cbso.co.uk/events/madam-butterfly
The only thing to be offended by in Zeffirelli’s dazzling production is inadequate singing. And that has become the rule rather than an exception. With paucity or absence of real dramatic voices the attention must be diverted to racial content. Simple and PC at the same time. Met used to be my favorite place in the world. Now I save time and money by NOT going. Sad…
I’m sitting here trying to think of any operas that somehow don’t offend someone. Hmmmmm…..I guess all of them need to be cancelled. Opera is doomed.
I always found opera an offensive kind of thing. Also the people who like it. Especially the people who like it.
Sally
That paragraph is part of a program note, a long essay which discusses the context of composition and performance. As for every opera programme ever.
Trying to turn this into a lame, washed out “trigger warning” story is not only incorrect, it’s dishonest. In fact, the mock outrage over this speaks more to the ‘anti-wokes’ (or however they want to style themselves) discomfort with the accurate discussion of Turandot’s performance context.
The intellectual dishonesty lies not in performing Turandot with a discussion of ‘why does it sound like this and why did an Italian decide to write about a mock Chinese story’, it’s the profoundly anti-knowledge position that we should not discuss anything about Turandot, ever, but pretend it descended from up high fully formed, completely by accident.
Chinese are so offended by this “racist” piece that at every giant ceremony in the Olympic Stadion music of Turandot is performed; with Xi happily enjoying it. Check it on Youtube.
In the current post-Covid, post-MeToo Woke Political Clinmate, Cosi Fan Tutte is highly misogynist and should be banned.
I guess Gelb won’t be staging the Mikado any time soon. He had problems with blacking up Otello a decade or so ago. What would they write about Lucia di Lammermoor with a brother who makes his sister marry someone against her will only to go nuts and murder her husband? Was there a warning about Aida, it might offend Egyptians and Ethiopians? La Juive might need a warning about Jews being persecuted by Catholics. Madama Butterfly with Japanese Cio-Cio San being driven to suicide by her cad American naval officer. Gelb certainly had no problem presenting Adams Death of Klinghoffer where he relished in promoting it ad nauseum without any warnings to the MET’s Jewish audience. Was there any warnings to the MET going public about rape in Rigoletto? How about Faust using Mephistopheles to sucker Marguerite? Gelb really jumped the shark here with his DEI program and his continued employment of that wasted salary Marcia Sells. But Gelb is in an educated persons business and he’s a college drop out. Every member of the orchestra, every singer and every other member of management at the MET managed to earn at least one college degree. He’s been in over his head since he got the job.
I rather doubt that many opera fans are turned off by stereotypes. If they were, they would have stopped being opera fans long, long ago.
A friend of mine who curates a radio opera program was recently reprimanded for cultural insensitivity because he programmed an excerpt of The Mikado! Absurd!
What about trigger warnings for Wagner operas? That would be a sea to drink.
As a native Californian, I am offended by the stereotypes found in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West.
That single paragraph selected from a three and a half page Program Note has obviously triggered NL. But it is not in any sense a trigger warning.
A trigger warning would read something like “This opera contains depictions of Chinese people and culture which some may find offensive.”
As far as I know, the Met did not issue such a trigger warning.
In 1926, when Turandot was premiered at the Met, how many people of Chinese descent would have been in the audience? American society has changed over the last 100 years. That is one reason why issues such as cultural appropriation have become a legitimate subject for discussion.
I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something very unsettling about the DEI movement. It feels slightly McCarthy-ish. They are coming to get you…and it doesn’t end well for anyone.
Blimey! …and here I am, after all these years of wondering, thinking the biggest controversy about this opera was whether it was pronounced Turandót or Turandough…