Theater
Turandot Presented by Nashville Opera Association, April 20 & 22 at TPAC’s Jackson Hall. photo: Marianne Leach
Nashville Opera Association’s 25th anniversary season concludes this week with two performances of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, presented almost 80 years to the day after its April 25, 1926, premiere in Milan, Italy. This stirring three-act spectacle puts the capper on a season that has aimed to appeal to a wide range of audiences, featuring serious material (Gounod’s Faust), lighter fare (Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe) and the company’s first world premiere (Marcus Hummon’s Surrender Road).
With its artistic reputation consistently on the upswing, NOA’s position as a growth-oriented, regionally important arts organization will take another step forward in the fall of 2007, when the company moves from its current South Nashville headquarters into a newly renovated office, event, storage and rehearsal space in Sylvan Park, adjacent to Nashville Ballet. The facility—to be named in tribute to the late Nashville philanthropist and arts lover Noah Liff—will encompass 24,000 square feet, custom-designed for the organization’s wide-ranging needs.
Opera executive director Carol Penterman continues to spearhead fundraising efforts for the new home. Meanwhile, artistic director John Hoomes—in demand as a director for other regional opera companies—is back home to assume the daunting task of restaging Puccini’s grand, sometimes horrifying tale of love and death in ancient China. It was last performed in Nashville by NOA in 2001.
“Opera companies, as a rule, rotate the most popular works within a five- or seven-year window,” Hoomes says. “For example, Carmen will come back again, as will La Boheme. The Puccini operas tend to come back regularly because they’re good box office, yet Turandot is not necessarily considered a mainstream work.”
According to Hoomes, Turandot’s typical turn in the opera repertoire rotation would be closer to every seven to 10 years. Yet the 2001 production, presented only a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, drew a huge public response.
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“That was an interesting time in the country, of course,” Hoomes says, “and the Puccini score taps into something deep. This is a huge undertaking and we normally wouldn’t bring it back so soon. Yet we’ve been constantly asked if we were going to do it again, and we wanted something spectacular to finish our anniversary season.”
With its nine principal singers, a chorus of almost 60, 35 extras and a children’s chorus of 20, Turandot has always presented its share of logistical and technical challenges. In this case, the company’s previous mounting provides the template for success.
“This is as close as we can essentially get to the 2001 production,” Hoomes continues. “We have the same big dragon set with the giant pearl, and we have the same costumes.” Hoomes also has his leading lady and man reprising their 2001 roles: soprano Lori Phillips as the vengeful, emotionally wounded princess Turandot and tenor Randy Locke as Calaf, the mysterious prince who meets Turandot’s potentially lethal challenge.
“Lori made her debut in the role with us in 2001,” Hoomes says. “It’s an incredibly treacherous role, so high and loud that it requires a huge voice. Now she has sung it for other important companies.”
For Locke, this engagement represents an opportunity to return to one of the big tenor roles in all of opera, its heartrending signature aria, “Nessun Dorma” (“No one is sleeping”), having been performed by the greatest voices of the modern era. (It’s a Pavarotti staple—he performed it most recently at the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics.)
Others in the cast include soprano Stella Zambalis as Liu, bass Gustav Andreassen as Timur, baritone Keith Moore as The Mandarin, tenor Ted Wylie as Emperor Altoum, and Thomas Potter, Doug Perry and Dean Anthony as the royal advisers Ping, Pang and Pong.
Turandot was Puccini’s final opera, yet he died before finishing the score. The remaining 15 percent, including the concluding romantic duet, was completed by Italian composer and pianist Franco Alfano, with the unofficially credited assistance of world-class conductor Arturo Toscanini. Other composers have attempted their own versions of the conclusion, but Alfano’s remains the accepted ending.
With Turandot’s storied history, mythic backdrop, lavish sets and costumes and unsettlingly beautiful music—not to mention the accompaniment of the Nashville Symphony, conducted by James Caraher (the maestro’s first time with this score)—it’s no surprise that Nashville Opera is looking forward to sell-out crowds at TPAC.
“If you’re going to do Turandot,” says Hoomes, “you’ve got to do it in a big way. We had to save up our money for this one.”