Back in November 1924, China’s last emperor, Pu Yi, left the Forbidden City. The same month, on the other side of the globe, the composer Giacomo Puccini died before completing his last work, the opera “Turandot,” which was set in the imperial palaces from which the deposed emperor had secretly departed days before.
More than 70 years later, that historical coincidence is being brought full circle with the staging of “Turandot” in the place where it was originally set–the imperial courtyards of the Forbidden City.
And what a homecoming it will be. For nine nights, starting Saturday, the orchestra and chorus of Florence’s Teatro Comunale will breathe life, color and music once again into the dusty, ancient pavilions that have lain locked and empty for all these years.
Zubin Mehta is to conduct the $10 million extravaganza. Chinese film director Zhang Yimou directs. Sharon Sweet, Barbara Hendricks and Kristjan Johannsson take the lead roles. A cast of 1,000 eunuchs, concubines, mandarins, monks and warriors will back them up, on a stage formed by the steps and forecourt of the Ancestral Temple, where China’s emperors once worshipped, got married and were crowned.
“It will be unforgettable,” promises Zhang Yimou. “The setting is magnificent, spectacular. The opera will be magnificent and spectacular too.”
It will also be a “Turandot” quite unlike any seen before, and not only because of its location. “Turandot” has never been shown in China, because the authorities believe the fictitious tale of a ruthless and bloodthirsty Chinese princess portrays China in a negative light.
And indeed, the storyline contains plenty of politically incorrect possibilities for suspicious Communist Party propagandists to gnash their teeth over. The Chinese princess Turandot, who sets riddles for her suitors, then has them killed when they get the answers wrong, is a portrait of barbaric ruthlessness, reflecting, Chinese critics say, the worst of the West’s anti-Chinese prejudices.
The man who outwits her, by answering her questions correctly, is a foreigner, a visiting Tatar prince, who eventually wins her heart — a plot in which hints of the presumed superiority of foreign civilization over Chinese backwardness could be read by some conspiracy-minded censors.
They have read it that way in the past. An audience that turned up for what was supposed to be the Chinese premiere of “Turandot” in 1991 was treated instead to a medley of songs from different operas; no explanation was offered for the change in program.
So this “Turandot” had to be different if it was to succeed where others have failed, said Michael Ecker, of Opera on Original Site Inc. (OOS), the Austrian company that is behind the project and was responsible for taking Verdi’s “Aida” to Luxor, Egypt.
It had to have international prestige, to match the prestige of the location. But it also had to assuage Chinese sensitivities about the plot’s subliminal messages, which meant bringing a Chinese interpretation to the Western composition.
The India-born Mehta was the obvious choice for conductor. His 1973 rendition of the work, with Luciano Pavarotti, is regarded as definitive. And he jumped at the chance. “I’ve always dreamed of conducting `Turandot’ in China. To be doing it not only in China but inside the Forbidden City — it’s a tremendous honor,” he says.
But China has no tradition of staging Western opera, no one with experience of the genre who could collaborate on such a venture. Then Ecker was introduced to Zhang Yimou, China’s acclaimed film director, whose sumptuous historical movies “Raise The Red Lantern” and “Ju Dou” earned him international acclaim.
The Mehta-Zhang ticket proved a winning solution. By marrying the finest in Western operatic tradition with the finest China has to offer in terms of artistic direction, OSS could promise the government a top-quality production of a Western opera with Chinese characteristics.
Ironically, Zhang himself was once subject to the same accusations that kept “Turandot” away from China for so many years. His sensual but sad portrayals of life’s cruelties in imperial China earned him Oscar nominations in the West but censure back home, where he was ostracized for portraying China’s history in a negative light to the outside world.
Now back in favor after directing some movies set in modern times that were panned by Western critics but acclaimed in China, Zhang’s skills are being called upon to rescue “Turandot.”
Though Zhang has no operatic experience, he brings to the project the same eye for historical detail and opulent panoramas that characterized his earlier, banned movies. But perhaps most important, he also contributes his extensive experience of battling China’s censors.
From the Puccini original, Zhang has teased a new interpretation that not only won over the government, but has its officials gushing with enthusiasm for the new, previously hidden political messages they have discovered in its storyline.
“Turandot” is not, in fact, a story about cruelty or the backwardness of China, but one that underscores the correctness of China’s policy of opening up to the outside world, explained executive producer Zhang Yu, of the China Performing Arts Agency, under the Ministry of Culture. The government agency is organizing the show jointly with OSS and is wholeheartedly behind it, he said.
Turandot has her suitors executed because she wants to be alone, he said. But she learns that isolation is wrong, and finds happiness by falling in love. “This `Turandot’ will emphasize that communication is better than isolation and that understanding is better than misunderstanding,” Zhang Yu explained.
If past productions haven’t interpreted it that way, it was because Puccini never visited China so couldn’t possibly have known what it was really like, he said. Indeed, during Puccini’s lifetime, few people in the world had set foot inside the secretive, enclosed enclave where China’s emperors had spent 400 years living in almost complete seclusion.
Puccini’s China was therefore a hostile, alien place. Western operatic convention has traditionally set the opera in shades of gray and black to capture the menacing tone of the story, the melodrama of the music and the iciness of the princess who preferred murder to love.
In fact, however, life in China’s imperial court was anything but gray, as the millions of tourists who have visited the Forbidden City since it was opened to the public a year after Puccini’s death can attest.
So Zhang Yimou’s “Turandot” will be a more authentic one, using the setting and faithfully reproduced costumes to re-create the splendor and opulence of the Ming court. “It emphasizes the glories of China’s past and also the glories of its present,” Zhang Yu said.
The Forbidden City, with its red ochre walls, the tiled roofs of bright yellow and the azure decorations, doesn’t need any dressing up. Authentic Ming dynasty costumes, scrupulously researched, and hand-sewn in silks of orange, lime, scarlet, gold, mauve and turquoise, will turn this “Turandot” into a blaze of color.
Zhang Yimou is also introducing some conventions drawn from traditional Chinese opera, which is almost wholly symbolic in its presentations, unlike its Western counterpart. The execution scenes, often depicted graphically on Western stages, will be illustrated by the turning of pages of a giant book at the back of the stage showing pictures of the weapons used.
Mehta shrugs off the “new” interpretation as irrelevant to the overall production. The plot doesn’t make sense anyway, he says. “It’s not the first opera where we don’t know what is going on,” he said. “The music will be exactly the same.”
Zhang Yimou denies tailoring the production to suit the authorities. “I am a Chinese. I don’t know Western culture well. So obviously I am directing this through Chinese eyes,” he said.
By downplaying the violence of the story, the emphasis is Turandot’s realization that she loves the prince who got the answers to her riddles right.
Those who have bought tickets will be hoping Zhang Yimou has finally got the answer right to the riddle of “Turandot,” at least as far as the Chinese censors are concerned. The cheapest seats are $150. Those in the front row are $1,250. Sponsorship tickets are going for $1,500, which includes a banquet served in the Forbidden City. Travel agents around the world are selling ” `Turandot’ packages” that combine the opera with sightseeing.
Just in case, OSS has taken out insurance from Lloyds of London against cancellation by the authorities, an unusual policy that did not come cheaply, Ecker said.
But no one seriously believes the event will be called off.
And not now that China appears to have found in the staging of the fairytale a new political message that the censors failed to notice before.
