Zeffirelli’s Turandot gets jammed at the Met
OperaWednesday night’s performance went ahead in half a staging after one set got caught in an elevator.
Peter Gelb told the audience that the jam happened as sets were being moved after a daytime rehearsal of Puccini’s La Rondine.
‘Our brilliant cast, orchestra and chorus are ready to perform for you in what will be an historic first — a semi-staged presentation of `Turandot’ at the Met,’ he said, offering refunds to the disgruntled.
Woke ghosts at work?
Too perfect.
Remember, the stage lifts at the Metropolitan Opers were changed at exhorbitant expense by Peter Gelb to accomodate his commissioned Ring Cycle. That infamous production that when delivered had to be sent back as they didn’t measure twice and cut once. That costs them millions in overtime for the MET scenic shop to go to Canada for months to make it ready for the MET stage. Yet another Gelb boondoggle.
Half of Turandot is better than all of Met’s new modern stagings.
May be so. But two intervals of 45 min for the set change are way too much for such a short opera. Especially if you go to see it more than once. One long break would be enough. Some singers also get annoyed by such a long waiting time while keeping the voice warm.
Ideally would be to keep this production but make set adaptations for quicker set change.
A long 1-hour interval for dinner sounds good to me (like in Europe).
There’s a great pizza shop about 4 blocks north, and plenty of time to get there and back………..
Where? The only long opera intervals I know of are Bayreuth and Glyndebourne, matched by mid afternoon start times.
Pesaro too.
La Traviata Pizzeria
The long intermission gives them lots of time to sell cups of coffee for $10 (small) and champagne (No idea for how much). It’s a good job Starbucks is only a block away…………….not that their coffee is that good mind you……..
A friend of mine who supered in this production several times says the actual changing of the sets is not very time- consuming. There was never a 45 minute intermission after Act I until Gelb took over.
Turandit nice in the end
Obviously this unfortunate incident made some people happy.
You really have to wonder, don’t you?
Indeed, I wonder why.
Not the most uplifting report. Really pushes one’s buttons. Sound like the audience got the shaft too, but maybe the problems will raise some funding…
William, you do humour?
This isn’t the first hiccup for Turandot in recent memory. I recall a couple of years ago when the scrim wouldn’t rise for the final scene and the dancers were left twiddling their thumbs – or at least their fans. Some in the audience saw fit to boo but I like seeing an unscripted moment. Boo a lackluster performance if you must. But booing an unforeseen and unavoidable stage mishap is a Turandon’t.
This is New York, we boo our own baseball team……………
I was in the hall for this performance. I traveled to the city really to see the Romeo and Juliet, which was very fine. The only other performance that made sense with my schedule was Turandot, which ordinarily I would have given a miss, but I’ve never seen this production live and since it is going away I figured it would be worthwhile. Obviously didn’t work out for me. I knew something was definitely going on when it was 10 minutes before the scheduled curtain time and the doors to the auditorium hadn’t been opened yet. But I assumed, as a seasoned opera attender, that perhaps there had been a need to bring in a last-minute cover or some such thing and they were walking through some staging. Never expected the whole production wouldn’t be able to go on. I stayed for two acts to make sure I had heard everybody sing, and I won’t go into any comments here about the singing. But I saw no compelling reason to stay for the final act. Things happen, and there are a lot of mechanics going on any given day at the Metropolitan. But it was unfortunate and we should be able to expect better from our Premier Opera company. Just one last comment, I was fairly well impressed with the debut of the conductor. Turandot is perhaps not the most challenging opera to manage musically – subtlety doesn’t exactly abound – but I thought she handled the score quite well be the orchestra was responsive. Oh and the chorus was, of course, spectacular.
Thanks for your Yelp take.
Fyi Puccini himself pronounced Turandot without the ‘t’ He made revisions in collaboration with Toscanini before his sudden death. During rehearsals Toscanini wanted everyone to sing in full voice at all times like a real performance, and had the greatest difficulty with Ping Pang Pong’s music (don’t ask me why).
Rosa Raisa, the creatrix of the title role was interviewed by Studs Terkel in the 1950’s and made perfectly clear that “Turandot” was pronounced without the T at the end by Puccini. Frankly it also sounds better that way. The interview can be heard at the NYPL Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center if anyone cares.