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Featured review
"Remove her crowns all the jewellery and gaudy dressing, and all you find is the flesh of a woman"
It's an old medieval tale which was repeatedly dramatised in different forms and even refashioned by Friedrich von Schiller (1802), and even H. C. Andersen treated the subject in one of his best tales ("Reisekamaraten"). The plot is totally absurd. Turandot is a cruel all-powerful princess who beheads every suitor of hers who can't answer three tricky riddles, and many such have already been decapitated when Calaf enters the scene. He finds her abominable both as an example, princess and women, but the moment he sets eyes on her he falls hopelessly in love with her and risks his life by volunteering to answer the three absurd riddles. She is ice cold, cruel, inhuman and totally ruthless, so you must wonder how anyone could love such a creature - she is a monster. In Calaf's retinue there is a slave girl Liù who loves him sincerely, but she is only a slave girl, and he is a prince. The actual opera is about her. Turandot does not appear until half way through in the opera, and then she opens her mouth only to deliver a fearsome soliloquy of hatred and revenge, as she swears to kill all men who dare to approach her, as a revenge for the mistreatment of a female ancestor. Puccini died before having completed the opera, he reached as far as completing the Requiem for Liù, the rest of the opera (10 minutes) was completed by Alfano, a pupil of his, but all the magic of Puccini's music is lost from that bar. When Toscanini conducted the first performance at La Scala in Milan, he laid down his baton at that point and would not continue, stating "at this point the maestro died". The music of the first act is probably the finest music Puccini ever composed, and this performance renders it complete justice, the recording being surprisingly good for being just a TV-film. The opera is a director's ideal, as you can do so much with staging, the crowd playing an important part, the scary elements, the monstrous absurdity of the princess and above all the costumes, which this performance does with a vengeance. Franco Zeffirelli made an equally impressive screening of it shortly before his departure, but this is just as good, although much simpler and more primitive - television in the 50s was rather basic. Above all, the performance of Franco Corelli as Calaf is probably the best possible rendering of that character.
Details
- Runtime2 hours 3 minutes
- Color
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