![]() ![]() “The Giant Egg”) in 2008, only an over-the-top “Turandot” would do for its first opera. When Beijing opened its grandiose National Centre for the Performing Arts (a.k.a. Three years later, Zubin Mehta conducted an on-site media extravaganza, “Turandot in the Forbidden City,” directed by the celebrated Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou. The Chinese quickly changed their tune, though. Critic Mark Swed’s series on the ideas embedded in every note. When finally performed in Beijing in 1995, it was set in a mythical kingdom in Central Asia.Įntertainment & Arts How to Listen: A classical music series to open our ears in a COVID-quieted worldĮcstasy and excess, rhythm and repetition, gender and ethnicity. ![]() China banned the opera for decades because of its portrayal of the Chinese as barbarians. Then again, there is China’s own complicated relationship to “Turandot.” The work’s origin was a Venetian 1752 commedia dell’arte play inspired by collection of Persian stories that Carlo Gozzi transferred to an imaginary China of seven centuries ago. The Taipei production reimagines Puccini’s cruel opera about a princess fixated on avenging the rape and murder of a distant ancestor as the nightmares of a modern Chinese woman against a backdrop of the 2014 student protests in Hong Kong against Chinese rule. Taiwan, of course, has its own escalating issues with mainland China, tensions having the reached the point that the small island nation is undergoing military exercises in fear of an invasion. Fully staged with more than 250 performers and - just like on the White House lawn the night before - a large audience of nearly 2,000 sat close together in defiance of the coronavirus. The opera served as a celebratory symbol of the reopening of the Taipei’s National Koahsiung Center for the Arts. The next morning, I set my alarm for 6 so I could catch the last act of “Turandot” being streamed live from Taiwan. ![]()
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