Love - "L'amore" - answers the slave Liù to the question of the Chinese princess Turandot, who has put so much strength in her heart that she does not want to reveal the name of the unknown prince, even under the threat of torture Not.
At the opera festival in the Arena di Verona, the young Spanish soprano Ruth Iniesta sings warmly and very gently about this love, accompanied by atmospheric, bassless, muted string chords, before she stabs herself with a soldier's dagger.
There is a lot in this devoted word “love”, how much, as Turandot, the main character in Giacomo Puccini's opera of the same name, may also recognize at this moment. At least in the role portrait of Anna Netrebko. With a half-suppressed, tension-laden line, sung very softly, she repeats the word, packs all her vulnerability into it and reveals in just a single bar a more complex emotional state than is generally granted to the princess with the heart of ice.
When Puccini succumbed to throat cancer in Brussels in November 1924, the finale to “Turandot” was not yet complete. The composer colleague Franco Alfano ventured a completion on the basis of the received drafts. Did he do the opera torso a favor in this way with the wonderfully fairytale-like, but dramaturgically and psychologically hardly comprehensible final transformation? There are different opinions on this. In any case, Turandot and the Prince Calaf find each other in the Alfano finale.
Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov also found their joint happiness in real life. They also show that offensively on stage, as they have been performing almost exclusively in pairs for a long time. Musically, however, it remains an approach on extremely different levels. Eyvazov's tenor is not supported enough in depth. In the high altitude, however, the voice is undoubtedly sweeping, but sounds mysterious, narrow and all too stereotypically tinny. The Azerbaijani singer likes to build a pedestal by slowing down the tempos and making large gestures and then shouting them out with little gallantry. No warmth, no suppleness, no timbre that would beckon.
His wife Anna Netrebko, on the other hand, is at the zenith of her vocal abilities. Her mature, round and darkened soprano flickers with all the necessary dramatic intensity. It lures with cooing depths, captivates with effortlessly thrown out high notes and creates compositional details as expressively as possible without neglecting the large arcs. The direct comparison of the two singers reveals the dilemma: Despite all their love beyond the stage, Eyvazov and Netrebko cannot find a harmonious harmony, which ultimately also damages the opera diva in the duets.
At the podium of the Orchestra dell'Arena di Verona, however, Jader Bignamini slowly drags his way through Puccini's master score in the little differentiated permanent fore. He achieves a fortissimo increase exclusively through the brass section. A rich percussion with tam-tam, Chinese gong, xylophone, tubular bells and celesta actually promises an exciting orchestral story. But the richness of timbres intended by Puccini with such a gigantic apparatus does not materialize on this evening.
Admittedly, the acoustics in the Roman amphitheater, which is only occupied by six thousand people due to the corona (instead of the thirteen thousand five hundred theoretically available seats) is anything but easy. The choir, children's choir and long-distance orchestra stand far from the conductor on the stone steps. But the problem of coordination, which could have been alleviated with assistant conductors or auxiliary monitors, lies deeper. Because the musicians do not have a common pulse - and Bignamini does not give them any. With big rowing movements he tries awkwardly to get the musicians under control. He fails.
Hardly any use of the choir succeeds in synchronizing with the orchestra. In the large temple tableau in the second act, instrumentalists and singers can be seen desperately searching for the first beat of the measure. There is clearly a lack of craftsmanship here. Pity!
Honorable, however, is the basic scenic concept that the 99th edition of the festival gave itself, because another season with exclusively concert performances - Puccini's Dante adaptation "Gianni Schicchi" was there last year - and correspondingly reduced ticket prices would have the enormous financial consequences Loss of the previous year aggravated again (see FAZ of August 28, 2020). Since intensive scenic rehearsals were not possible in compliance with all corona-related hygiene rules, the festival concluded a cooperation agreement with Italy's top museums. Each of them provides objects for a different opera production, which are projected onto LED walls with an area of four hundred square meters by the largest Italian company for entertainment and video design, D-WOK.The projections for “Turandot” come from the Museum of Chinese Art and Ethnography in Parma.
It goes without saying that such productions cannot go beyond pure illustration, even if numerous nameless stage managers coordinated the appearances and resignations. And yet, despite all the culinary delights, the projections have something poetically unexcited about them. They create a space for the music to concentrate. In this respect, the pandemic experiment was a success.