Puccini’s Unfinished
Director Yona Kim: “The real drama begins – as in life – after the happy ending”
Source: Bertold Fabricius
Yona Kim directs Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Hamburg State Opera. She sets the piece in the 1920s, when Giacomo Puccini wrote his last, unfinished opera. Kim hits a nerve with the times.
Et is the first rehearsal of “Turandot” in the original stage design in the State Opera: assistant director Sascha calls the beat. The pianist starts. The conductor controls the singing of the imperial ministers Ping, Pang and Pong.
Then comes the appearance of the second stage manager from the left: “There has to be light over there, otherwise the rehearsal won’t continue.” Sascha to the lighting designer: “There always has to be light over there, Reinhard.” Director Yona Kim nods. Reinhard: “Susanne turns on the emergency light, since when have I been responsible for the emergency lighting?” Second stage manager: “Should I call the technical director or can you manage that?” Susanne turns on the light. Sascha says where to go next. The music picks up. Appearance of the first stage manager from the right: “No, no, no. Don’t just start. We have big boxes here.”
In fact, the imperial palace, which stage designer Christian Schmitt designed with touches of art deco, fills the stage – and without an emergency light, it is dangerous for the performers to take their first steps in it. Director Kim places the play in the 1920s, when Giacomo Puccini wrote his last opera.
The composer tells the story of the Chinese princess Turandot, who has any suitor beheaded who cannot solve three riddles. Finally, Prince Calaf manages to answer the questions of the ice-cold princess. Unfortunately only after the slave Liú, who was madly in love with him, sacrificed herself for him. “Love,” says the director, “is Liú’s element. Turandot and she are opposites that complement and condition each other. I would say if these two women came together in one, that would be the perfect woman.”
With regard to the time of its creation, the director says: “The old world order broke up after the First World War, and fascism grew stronger in Italy. One was searching. It was a foreboding period that we now know ended in the mid-1930s.”
An era ended with Puccini and his work with the unfinished “Turandot”. The composer died while being treated for throat cancer in November 1924. Liú was the last character he created. At the premiere in 1926 at the Scala in Milan, conductor Arturo Toscanini put down the baton after the death of Liú and said: “Here the master’s work ends. After that he died.” But Toscanini, who successfully refused the Duce Mussolini to take part in the premiere, commissioned Puccini’s pupil Franco Alfano to write an ending for the opera, which he performed in an abridged form. The Alfano version is also played in Hamburg.
Kim wants to free the piece “from the false exoticism”.
However, Kim considers the happy ending written by Alfano “poisoned” because of Liú’s death. Puccini struggled with the end, she reports, “Liú is dead and the other two are the criminals who killed them. How can love continue on the foundation of a corpse? How do I handle this?”
The director believes “the real drama begins – also in life – after the happy ending. The way to get there is the fairy tale.” She primarily wanted to liberate this fairy tale “from the false exoticism”. After all, Puccini had never been to China, nor had his three librettists. It is therefore important to “catapult Turandot away from fantasy China” into the concrete twenties, in which “the cultural borders between China and Europe were already very permeable.” 100 years later, Kim’s interpretation hits the nerve of the time, as far as current escalations in Europe are concerned .
It is a surprise that the opera is now premiering as part of the Italian Opera Weeks in Hamburg. Artistic Director Georges Delnon explains: “’Turandot’ was planned from the start as a co-production with the Salzburg Easter Festival. Because of Corona, it was only played there in concert.” However, Delnon continued, he did not want to give up the production, “and we looked for constructive solutions in-house to produce the equipment ourselves.”
Instead of Christian Thielemann in Salzburg, Giacomo Sagripanti is now the musical director of the production in Hamburg. The Russian soprano Anna Smirnova takes on the leading role in her house debut. Anna Netrebko should have sung in Salzburg, but not in Hamburg. In addition to Smirnova, Guanqun Yu as Liú and Gregory Kunde as Calaf will be on stage at the premiere.
Artistic Director Delnon introduced the “Italian Opera Weeks” in 2018. After starting with Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata”, in which soprano Aida Garifullina made her house debut, “Turandot” will be performed on March 13th. The festival will continue with Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” from March 15th and Verdi’s “Aida” from March 22nd. Finally, Verdi’s “Luisa Miller” is on the program (March 27 and 31).