(03 Sep 2008) Turandot @ Esplanade Theatre

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In 1920, after his foray into the Land of the Rising Sun in Madama Butterfly (1904), Puccini chose China as the setting for his next opera. Unlike Butterfly, which has captured the imagination of American audiences with the sexual drama of an American male’s encounter with an extremely young geisha (under-aged by today’s standards), Turandot is based entirely in the fictitious, ancient past. Princess Turandot originated from a set of Persian tales (translated into French); her name means ‘daughter of Turan’, which (historically) referred to the lower portion of Central Asia on today’s world map. Her eventual lover Calaf, a Tartar, originates from the higher portion of Central Asia, and in this production, is garbed in Mongolian dress. At the beginning of the opera, we witness the doomed Persian Prince from today’s Middle East. The bulk of the characterizations in the opera, of course, focus on the Chinese, from the emperor, to officials, servants, and the common people. At the end of the opera, the Mongolian prince successfully woos over the ruthless princess, while his forsaken Chinese slave girl, Liu, sacrifices herself to facilitate that union. Up till 1998, China had banned the opera. Perhaps they objected to the portrayal of the ruthless princess, the clownish trio Ping, Pong, and Pang, the methods of torture exercised on Liu, and the uneasy death of the abject Chinese slave girl who sacrificed herself for the royalty.

Ten years later, coinciding with the Beijing Olympics, Turandot is revived in Chinese-majority Singapore. The Games had monopolised the country’s only major English entertainment television channel for two whole weeks. Eighty-eight years after Puccini first set his pen to the score, a Singaporean audience finds itself bemused at some of (what are supposed to be) the most dramatic points in the opera. (Lots of ‘eights’ here, which the Chinese traditionally believes to be auspicious.) The audience could not help itself but laugh at the archaic mannerisms of an operatic tradition that has been grafted on our society. After her first kiss with Calaf, the distraught Turandot utters ‘What is happening to me?’, drawing laughter. When Calaf reveals his name, Turandot drew more laughter with her tautological ‘I know your name!’. (These translations were shown on the two screens on either side of the stage, which probably explains why the libretto was not provided in the $5 programme notes.) Well, the translations could be improved. There is also, however, the issue of the symbolic kiss and the symbolic revelation of identity, neither of which makes much impact on a modern audience more accustomed to – ironically - the ‘verismo’ (realism, in its original usage, referring to early twentieth century Italian opera) in today’s cinemas.

You may not think that an audience’s reception is important for an established work like Turandot. But trust me, it tells us a lot about ourselves. The audience was universally amused by Ping, Pong, and Pang, not least by their names, which correspond to a particularly distasteful joke that tells of how Chinese names are chosen as pots and pans fall down a staircase. (But you should know that ‘ping pong’, the game for which Singapore won a silver medal in the recent Olympics, originated in England; the name, too, came from the same country.)

From the Persian Empire, to Tartar, to Turan (which includes China), Turandot has traversed a vast track of the Asian continent, almost in the same way as some of our own music by Singaporean composers traverses India, China, and Indonesia. The composerly imagination is captured by the discourses of his time. By 1920, Europe, which at one time controlled 85% of the land mass in the world, was beginning the process of releasing this land to the populations in those regions. Canada, Australasia, the former Ottoman Empire, and the Baltic region all slipped from European control in the aftermath of World War I. What information about Asia that existed in Italy was what Puccini drew on in 1920, composing in a time when Italy was feeling the pinch of shrinking in the amount of land it controlled, at a point when the nascent imperialist Facist movement was about to engulf the whole country.

Today, we are privileged with better information about so many different countries, and we should be more resistant to characterisations that proceeded from a lack of knowledge. This is the meaning of ‘criticism’. We can appreciate the lavish, authentic-looking costumes (from what I have gathered through media images) of China, Mongolia, and the Middle East. (I am not sure if the dome on the Persian prince was a little large and unwieldy.) There were gracefully choreographed dances and fights (although the men in the fights could have been more aggressive). The staging was minimal but imposing, with effective use of lighting to suggest different times of the day and to enhance the mood. A particularly memorable, long drawn moment was the transition from night to sunrise effected on the large background screen, first with lights dotting a cobalt canvas like stars, then with streaks of off-white suggesting sunrise, followed by an emerging warm tangerine glow (the sun) that fused into the remnants of night.

Throughout the whole two hours, the orchestra provided brilliant support, though there were some unacceptable coordination problems right at the beginning of the opera, when the players should have been more alert. The chorus comprised of at least a substantial portion of amateur singers, with larynxes insufficiently raised to give depth, vowels insufficiently masked to give warmth, and phrases insufficiently nuanced to achieve the desired lyric quality; all these ironically lent the chorus a speech like, flat quality that distinguished a crowd that was supposed to be Chinese rather well from the European crowds in other operas. Indeed, if you compare the speech patterns of an upper class Englishman speaking Oxford English versus a Singaporean speaking Singlish, you will find that they correspond rather well to the singing voices of the royalty versus the crowd in the opera. A historical accident - but one which has many implications if we were to consider how to make opera come alive today.

The P*ng trio sang well, adopting feminine characteristics to draw laughter from the audience. Their gender ambiguity generated humour which relieved the tense moments, especially in their extended nostalgic aside in Act 2. Opposed to this femininity is the masculine figure of the emperor, who unfortunately failed to fulfil the requirements of his role both vocally and visually. Martin Ng portrayed a convincing father to Calaf, and Nancy Yuen was brilliant in her characterization of the pious Liu, although I think the character of Liu can plausibly be reinterpreted for today’s audiences as someone who is less of a submissive female slave. (I’m sure some of you are reminded of the other sexualized Liu in American media; let’s find other alternatives.) At times, Yuen’s voice sounded pinched, and the pitch faltered, but her dramatic entry right in the middle of the mob scene in Act 1 was nothing short of flawless.

Jessica Chen and Lee Jae Wook played the roles of Turandot and Calaf respectively. Both were adequate to the exhausting vocal demands of their roles, which necessitated two different artistes who sang each of these roles on alternate nights. They both sang in the expansive style associated with the heroes and heroines of Puccini. This is the general practice but I wonder if more characterization could have been infused in their quieter passages. Chen sounded tense in her higher register where all the consonants disappeared. Lee was much more successful, handling the vocal pyrotechnics effortlessly, although his first entry in Act 1 was obviously very tense and paled beside Yuen’s dramatic cry (mentioned earlier). The real test for Lee, though, is - of course - the staple of all operatic fans, the crowning aria of Turandot, ‘Nessun Dorma’. This was adequately sung, but the orchestra started out far too slowly for the tenor’s comfort; I’m not sure whether this was due glitches in the rehearsals. Like Turandot, the character of Calaf could have been more thoroughly thought through, both vocally, and in terms of stage presence. The singer appeared to fall short of breath at the apex of the aria on the triple pronouncement of ‘winning’ over Turandot. Nevertheless, his performance was undeniably the most brilliant of the night.

Overall, I would say that Singapore Lyric Opera has indeed come a long way since the times of poor orchestral support and dubious singers. This was a major production which showed Singaporeans that the musical scene has developed the capacity to handle Western opera. Now, how about more operas by our local composers?