Turandot Turandot ....... Luana de Vol Calaf .............. Franco Farina Liù ................. Barbara Frittoli Timur ............. Stefano Patatchi   Orcestro i Coro del Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona Dirigent: Giuliano Carela   **** 2 DVDs  -  TDK  -  DVWW-OPTURL  -  Februar 2007  **** TURANDOT, die Leidenschaftsoper, hat schon viele begeistert, aber auch betrübt, zur Verzweiflung getrieben ob der tragischen Leidenschaft darin. Und dann noch dieses Ambiente! Das ferne China hat nichts von seiner Exotik und Ausstrahlungskraft verloren, zumal das historische. Die Oper und ihre Musik spielt auch eine tragende Rolle in dem Schwulenfilm NOONE SLEEPS, was nicht umsonst schon im Titel durch die englische Übersetzung der wohl berühmtesten Arie des Calaf und einer der bekanntesten Puccinis überhaupt anklingt. Nun gibt es schon viele kulissenprächtige Einspielungen dieser Oper auf DVD, auch und gerade die am Originalschauplatz, der Verbotenen Stadt gedrehte ist ja geradezu fantastisch. Nun hat TDK eine weitere Aufnahme hinzugefügt, nach der von den Salzburger Festspielen 2002 eine weitere Turandot im eigenen Katalog - diesmal aus dem altehrwürdigen, aber auch modernen Gran Teatro del Liceu der katalanischen Metropole. Die Einspielung muss sich hinter den anderen nicht verstecken. Die Aufnahme ist düster, jedoch majestätisch inszeniert. Die vier Protagonisten: Turandot, Calaf, Liù und Timur sind allerdings schwankend bei Stimme. Wahrend Franco Farina einen wohl versierten, ebenso kraft- wie ausdrucksvollen Calaf, und Stefano Patatchi einen formschönen wohltembrierten Timur liefern, ist Barbara Frittolis Lui zwar mittig gut versiert, ihre hohen Töne jedoch sind leider etwas unkontrolliert, mit einem nicht mehr angenehmen Tremolo. Die Hauptprotagonistin Luana de Vol hat zwar eine gute, wenn nicht gar beherrschende Buhnenpräsenz, jedoch nicht wirklich ein schönes Timbre. In ihrer Rolle geht sie jedoch voll auf: Die Figur der chinesischen Prinzessin interpretiert sie voller Leidenschaft! Das Orchester des Gran Teatro del Liceu unter Giuliano Carela bietet wie immer orchestermusikalischen Hörgenuss pur! Die DVD: A Co-production of Gran Teatre del Liceu Teatro Real (Madrid) and Asociación Bilbaina de Amigos de la Ópera (ABAO) (Bilbao). Licensed worldwide by Gran Teatre del Liceu. Directed for TV and Video by Pietro d’Agostino. Recording Date/Place:                   Recorded live at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, 2004 Booklet Languages:                       English / German / French Subtitles:                                          English / German / French / Spanish / Italian / Catalan Bild:                                                  16:9 anamorph Audio Format:                                  DD 5.1  ·  DTS 5.1  ·  LPCM Stereo Total Time:                                      132 minutes *** weitere Infos  Courtesy of TDK  *** The Work: Described by the composer himself as a dramma lirico, Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, is based on a tragicomic fiaba, or fairytale, by the Venetian dramatist Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) itself loosely inspired by the Arabian Nights. The libretto is the work of Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. The score was left unfinished by the composer and was not completed until 1926, two years after his death, when Franco Alfano prepared a performing edition based on Puccini’s surviving sketches and notes. This version is now generally accepted as the definitive version of the work’s ending. And yet Alfano’s problematic contribution has often provoked dissent, and when Arturo Toscanini conducted the work’s first performance at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, in 1926, he famously decided to lay down his baton after the death of Liù, the last music composed by Puccini. Turandot represents a significant change in Puccini’s literary aesthetic. His previous stage works had, for the most part, been realistic in character and sentimental in tone, and yet Gozzi’s fairytale world – or, to be more accurate, the enchanted world of the Orient – caught the changing mood in Europe at this period. The result is an opera based on a mysterious and sensuous tale, a love story both barbarically cruel and gruesomely fascinating that tells of cold and obstinate resistance on the part of the Chinese princess, Turandot, who who denies all emotional ties, only to be overcome by the power of love in the end. In musical terms Turandot has all the marks of a unique work. In this opera Puccini’s harmonic language won a new boldness and modernity, while retaining its wonderful naturalness. In the process it was refined by the application of oriental colours and the frequent use of pentatonicism, adding further melodic and expressive possibilities that the composer exploited skilfully / effectively. The instrumentation requires an extremely large orchestra, and the choral writing has a power that the composer’s earlier works could hardly have led us to expect.   Synopsis: Act I: Peking in legendary times. Outside the walls of the imperial city a mandarin proclaims Princess Turandot’s decree that she will only marry the suitor of royal descent who succeeds in solving her three riddles. Those who do not succeed must forfeit their lives, as the Prince of Persia has just done. Accompanied by the slave Liù, the King of Tartary, Timur, deposed by the Chinese, spots his son Calaf in the crowd, who, just like his father, is in Peking incognito. As the moon rises the Persian prince is executed. On seeing the princess, Calaf is so fascinated by her beauty that he resolves to win her over. Although the ministers Ping, Pang and Pong warn him and both Liù and Timur desperately try to dissuade him from carrying out his intention, he officially asks for Turandot’s hand in marriage by sounding the big gong three times. Act II: In a large, lavishly decorated pavilion inside the imperial palace. Ping, Pang and Pong long for a life of tranquility on their estates, far away from Peking and the man-slaying princess, but a commotion in the palace courtyard returns them to reality. The courtiers and the people have gathered in a square inside the palace and the emperor appears together with his daughter. Turandot tells those present how, many thousand years ago, her ancestor Lou-Ling had been raped and killed. To avenge this deed she forces every suitor to submit to the ritual. Calaf is not deterred and to everyone’s amazement solves the three riddles. Turandot is distraught at the idea of having to follow the stranger and implores her father to help her, but the emperor reminds her that he has sealed her conditions with his oath. Calaf does not want to break her pride but wants to win her love and gives her a last chance: if she succeeds in finding out before sunrise what he, the unknown prince in Peking, is called, he will voluntarily go to his death. Act III: Heralds announce Turandot’s order that no one may sleep that night as long as the name of the unknown prince remains a secret. The three ministers try in vain to persuade Calaf to disclose his name by promising him beautiful women, treasures and glory; even terrible threats do not scare him. Suddenly Timur and Liù are dragged in by the pursuers, as they had been seen with the stranger. In order to save the old king from torture, Liù declares that she alone knows the name of the unknown prince. When the executioner tries brutally to wrest her secret from her, she predicts that Turandot, too, will not be able to resist Calaf’s love, and then she stabs herself. Turandot admits to having hated and at the same time loved him right from the beginning, to having feared and despised him and implores him to be content with his victory and leave. Calaf however puts his fate into her hands by revealing his name to her. The crowd acclaims the Emperor Altoum. Turandot appears and triumphantly tells her father that she knows the unknown prince’s name: “His name is … love!” The Artists: Soprano Luana DeVol was born in San Mateo, California and made her European debut in 1983 in Stuttgart, where she sang Leonore in Fidelio. Returning briefly to the United States, she appeared with the Seattle Opera as Donna Leonora in La Forza del Destino and with the San Francisco Opera in the title role of Ariadne of Naxos. Since the mid eighties Luana DeVol has sung primarily in Europe and has enjoyed particular success in the German repertoire, specializing in the operas of Strauss, Verdi, and Wagner. She is a regular guest on the rosters of the Deutsche Berlin, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Nederlandse Oper, Hamburg Staatsoper, Bayerische Staatsoper, Züricher Oper, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Teatro alla Scala, Milan and at the festivals of Bayreuth and Salzburg. 2006 saw her Metropolitan Opera debut as Ortrud in Lohengrin. She has performed under a number of celebrated opera conductors, among them Loren Maazel, Kurt Masur, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Daniel Barenboim, Guiseppe Sinopoli, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Ingo Metzmacher. Born in Milan, Barbara Frittoli studied at the conservatory Giuseppe Verdi. Since her operatic debut at the Teatro Comunale, Florence in 1989, Barbara Frittoli's career has reached international acclaim and she is now recognised as the leading Italian lirico-spinto soprano of her generation. She has worked with many leading conductors including Claudio Abbado, Semyon Bychkhov, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Colin Davis, Daniele Gatti, Lorin Maazel, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano and Georges Prêtre. Her operatic roles include Mimi in La Bohème at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, Vienna's Staatsoper, Teatro Communale in Florence and at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; Micaëla in Carmen in Philadelphia, Vienna, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Met; the Countess in Le Nozze de Figaro in Ferrara, Vienna, La Scala, Milan, and the Salzburg Festival; Desdemone in Otello in Brussels, at the Salzburg Festival and at the Teatro Regio in Turin. She has also appeared as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte in Vienna, at the Ravenna Festival, at Covent Garden, in Naples and at the Glyndebourne Festival; Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni in Vienna, at the Bastille Opera in Paris and in Naples; Liù in Turandot at the Bastille and on tour in China with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and many more. On TDK DVD, Barbara Frittoli can be enjoyed in Verdi’s Otello (DV-OPOTEL) and Falstaff (DVWW-OPFALF) and in Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon under Riccardo Muti (DVWW-OPMEP). Franco Farina was born in Connecticut and graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he now holds an honorary doctorate. Farina made his professional debut in 1982 at the Spoleto Festival and since then has won international renown in nearly all of the world's leading opera houses and operatic centres, including the Metropolitan Opera New York where he made his debut in 1990 as Rodolfo in La Boheme, and where he has performed each season since. Farina's relationship with the Opera National de Paris is similarly close. After his first appearance there in 1995 as Adorno in Simon Boccanegra, he has returned regularly, appearing in new productions of Eugene Onegin, Norma and Macbeth, and in revivals of La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, and Turandot. At the Vienna State Opera he has sung Mefistofele, under Riccardo Muti and has also appeared in La Bohème, Tosca, La Traviata, and Un Ballo in Maschera. He appears regularly in European opera houses such as Berlin, Brussels, London and Rome, and he sang Calaf in the Teatro Comunale Firenze production of Turandot, which toured Japan under Zubin Mehta.

2 DVDs TDK  DVWW-OPTURL  -  Februar 2007 Interpretation Klang: Inszenierung:         gut sehr gut sehr gut