Première of the 86th Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino: "Turandot"
Sunday 21 April 2024 at 8pm, in the year of the centenary of Giacomo Puccini, “Turandot” returns to the scenes of the Teatro del Maggio, under the direction of the director emeritus Zubin Mehta and in the historic staging signed by Zhang Yimou, filmed by Stefania Grazioli.
On the podium, in the main roles, Olga Maslova in the part of Princess Turandot; SeokJong Baek as Calaf; Valeria Sepe is Liu; Simon Lim is Timur and Carlo Bosi plays Altoum.
The performance on April 21st will be broadcast live on Rai Radio 3
In the foyer of the large hall of the Teatro del Maggio there is an exhibition dedicated to Giacomo Puccini and the staging of his works at the Maggio. Thanks to the Cerratelli Foundation, four original Turandot costumes designed by Umberto Brunelleschi in 1940 will also be on display
To underline the opera inauguration, the large Ferris wheel in the Cascine park carries the Festival logo in the center of the structure
We inform the public that tickets for all five performances of the show scheduled on the bill are sold out
Florence, April 19th, 2024 – After the great success of the inaugural concert on 13 April, which saw the curtain rise on the 86th Festival of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in a sold-out Mehta Hall, the opera program of the Festival begins, which – in the year that marks 100 years since the death of the great Giacomo Puccini – presents one of the most beloved operas of the Lucca composer, Turandot.
The opera, which Puccini did not have the opportunity to complete and which was finished by Franco Alfano, is on the podium of the Sala Grande, Sunday 21 April at 8 pm, leading the Maggio Orchestra and Choir and the Children's Choir of the Accademia del Maggio, the conductor emeritus for life Zubin Mehta who, over the course of his career, made Turandot undoubtedly one of the most significant operas in his repertoire.
Five performances in total, all already completely sold out in every seating order: April 21st, 24th, 30th and May 3rd at 8pm and April 27th at 3.30pm.
The staging, specific to Maggio, is perhaps one of the shows that have most marked the recent lyric history of the Theater and is directed by Zhang Yimou, one of the most influential Chinese filmmakers of the last half century and three-time Academy nominee.
On stage, forming the vocal cast of the show, Olga Maslova and Eunhee Maggio (performance on May 3rd) in the part of Princess Turandot; SeokJong Baek and Ivan Magrì (performances on April 27th and 30th) play Calaf; Valeria Sepe is Liù; Simon Lim is Timur while Carlo Bosi plays Altoum. Lodovico Filippo Ravizza; Lorenzo Martelli and Oronzo D'Urso are Ping, Pang and Pong respectively while Qianming Dou plays A Mandarin. The cast concludes with three artists from the Maggio Choir: Davide Ciarrocchi in the role of The Little Prince of Persia, Thalida Marina Fogarasi and Anastassiya Kozhukharova as the two Handmaids of Turandot. The Nuovo BallettO di ToscanA will also be the protagonist on stage.
The master of the Coro del Maggio is Lorenzo Fratini.
The master of the Children's Choir of the Accademia del Maggio is Sara Matteucci.
The first performance will be broadcast live on radio by Rai Radio3. In the foyer of the large hall of the Teatro del Maggio there is an exhibition dedicated to Giacomo Puccini and the staging of his works at the Maggio. Thanks to the Cerratelli Foundation, the original Turandot costumes designed by Umberto Brunelleschi in 1940 will also be on display
Among the most loved and proposed Puccini titles of all time, Turandot - starting from 1929 - has been staged eleven times during the history of the Theatre, including the staging (always based on the direction of Zhang Yimou) in semi-scenic form of the autumn of 2012 which therefore makes these performances the real 'debut' in the Main Hall of the magnificent direction signed by the great Chinese filmmaker, proposed a total of four times during the Maggio seasons. The opera - which is based on the stage fairy tale Turandotte by Carlo Gozzi, in turn inspired by the Arab-Persian collection Les Milles et un jour - as mentioned, was not completed by Puccini who was still working on the finale when he died in Brussels on November 29, 1924, the last scenes of Turandot were therefore completed by Franco Alfano; just over a year later, on 25 April 1926, the premiere of the opera was held at the Teatro alla Scala directed by Arturo Toscanini who, in concert in Alfano, had contributed to completing the finale.
The protagonist of the story, of course, is Princess Turandot, who - as underlined by Maggio superintendent Carlo Fuortes - is one of the three great heroines around which the opera programming of the 86th Maggio Festival will focus: "The absolute protagonists of the Festival's opera programming will be three women and – precisely on the occasion of the hundred years since the death of Giacomo Puccini – we will have two great Puccinian heroines, Tosca and Turandot, between them there will be Jeanne Dark in a new contemporary opera by Fabio Vacchi”.
These three great women are also the central figures of the Festival poster, created by Francesca Banchelliin collaboration with the Museo Novecento in which Turandot, Joan of Arc and Tosca are represented as a Trinitarian image of female archetypes, with a strong predominance of bright colors and strong lights, as for a real theatrical scene.
On the podium, to kick off the opera program of the 86th edition of the Maggio Festival, its conductor emeritus for life Zubin Mehta, who has made Puccini's opera one of the jewels of his repertoire, tackling it countless times from alive and recording it on disc several times, starting from his first recording of the work, which took place in 1966, up to arriving a few years later at what is considered by many critics to be the reference disc, i.e. the 1972 edition with protagonists Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti and Montserrat Caballé.
It was Maestro Mehta himself who wanted Zhang Yimou for the 1997 Florentine edition of Turandot, the first he directed at the Maggio and which immediately had, as mentioned, an extraordinary success. Such a success that the following year, after long negotiations, it was brought to China, to the legendary Forbidden City of Beijing - until then never permitted for live performances - where Puccini's opera is set and where Zubin Mehta directed the Orchestra and Choir of the Maggio in nine memorable consecutive evenings in front of over 4000 people for each single performance, marking one of the most important stages in the history of the Maggio. Also worth mentioning is the great success of the opera during its tours in Tokyo in 2001 and 2006, again in the production by Zhang Yimou with the direction of Zubin Mehta.
In the interview given for the 1997 theater booklet, maestro Mehta highlighted how Alfano's ending (which will be performed for this production) was actually necessary from a dramaturgical point of view: "I know well that many critics have analyzed I will explain the problem of the ending of Turandot by formulating various hypotheses. We will perform the traditional ending, the one composed by Alfano on the basis of the indications left by Puccini. Also because from a dramaturgical point of view an ending is necessary and I will explain why: once, directing this I interrupted the opera at La Scala where Puccini left it, after Liù's death and I realized that this choice shifts too much of the dramatic weight of the action onto the young slave to the detriment of the figure of the terrible princess. Musically speaking, in Turandot, as in Fanciulla del West, Puccini is influenced by impressionist music, especially by Ravel, and has some pages - I am thinking of the scene between Ping, Pong and Pang - which are harmonically extraordinary and new, but it is not prudent to say that the Puccini's last work marks the beginning of a new era in the field of opera". Maestro Mehta then focused on the work carried out in parallel with Zhang Yimou: “I am very happy to have worked with this great man of cinema, who faces the opera stage for the first time. We saw each other many times and we found a perfect point of agreement. The scenes and costumes are also beautiful and finally reproduce a true and real China, just as the direction will refer to traditional movements, yet familiar to the Chinese of today.”
On stage, in the role of the glacial princess Turandot, Olga Maslova, making her absolute debut on the stage of Maggio and who recently played the title role at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg: talking about the character and the traits that characterize her characterize, Olga Maslova also underlined her joy in taking part in this historic production: “It is a source of great pride for me to be here to inaugurate the 86th Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with this splendid revival of Zhang Yimou's show, together with the maestro Mehta and the splendid Orchestra and Coro del Maggio. The production is wonderful, from the sets to the costumes, which are magnificent in every way. My character is certainly marked by large shades of anger: a heart covered in ice which however awaits someone who can truly melt it. Seen from another perspective, Princess Turandot is a woman who suffers, unable to really live her life and it was very intriguing for me to explore this aspect, to be able to understand at what moment she stops being cold to enter more into contact with him emotional side”.
Calaf is instead played by SeokJong Baek (Ivan Magrì in the performances of April 27th and 30th), who also recently starred in the same role, with great success among the public and critics, in the performances of Turandot in recent weeks staged at the Metropolitan in New York. Liù, the young slave of Timur – the elderly and blind father of Calaf, played by Simon Lim – is played by Valeria Sepe, who returns to the scenes of Maggio after the performances of Pagliacci in September 2019 and who over the course of her career has played the part numerous times, always receiving enthusiastic acclaim from the public and critics, from the performances at the Massimo in Palermo in 2019 to the most recent productions in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Carlo Bosi, who played Pang in the semi-staged performances of 2012, voices Emperor Altoum, Turandot's father.
The participation of the artists of the Accademia del Maggio is also important, with Eunhee Maggio who will take on the role of the protagonist in the performance on May 3rd; Lodovico Filippo Ravizza, Lorenzo Martelli and Oronzo D'Urso who respectively give voice to the Grand Chancellor Ping, the Grand Superintendent Pang and the Grand Cook Pong and Qianming Dou, recently among the protagonists of La bohéme which was staged last November and who dresses the role of A Mandarin.
The vocal cast is completed by three artists from the Maggio Choir: Davide Ciarrocchi in the role of The Little Prince of Persia and Thalida Marina Fogarasi and Anastassiya Kozhukharova as the two Handmaids of Turandot.