Grand Opera House,Belfast
Calixto Bieito’s version of Puccini’s Chinese epic is worthwhile musically but becomes the victim of its own excessWhen Turandot had its first performance in 1926, two years after Puccini’s death, and conductor Arturo Toscanini famously ended the show with the final section the composer had completed ex-king Timur’s mourning for the dead slave-girl,Li. Almost every performance since has used a completion by Puccini’s younger modern Franco Alfano, who created from Puccini’s sketches the duet between Turandot and Calaf and the opera’s brief celebratory final scene.
Calixto Bieito’s production ends as Toscanini did, and leaving the drama intentionally incomplete; the Spanish director apparently believes that Puccini wanted a peaceful ending – though on what authority,he doesn’t say. Another peculiarity is to play the three acts without interval, giving audiences two hours of music to sit through at one go. Puccini intended no such thing.
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Source: theguardian.com