In times like ours, here is someone who not only looks the part, but is: brains and beauty and conviction.īy the time we arrive at the final act, whether or not Maestro Puccini would have had it so or not, Standard Franco Alfano’s version – we find a girl-ish woman, tearful, astonished, vulnerable. No question who is in charge, and how: Woman-Force without a quiver.
For, here she is: bold, assured, powerful. If he loved her before, he knew nothing of love if he envisioned her before, he must have been sightless. Determining anything you have thought before this moment and just about for any other – Fire and Ice, Princess Turandot. And so, where is she? On and on, troops of “the people” – boy chorus, various authorities dressed in fantastic colorful garb, ministers of ranks we never even dreamed about, executioners, semi-naked ax grinders, lamp-carriers, you name it – Peking, of an undefined time, plus the trio of clowning – quasi-chorus – upper-rank servants – Ping, Pang, Pong… Will she never appear?īut, finally, Act two, and after various maidens with more than Rapunzel-length hair, and in braids, strewing rose-petals hither and yon, here she comes, as well as dancers and acrobats somersaulting across the stage. From the moment the curtain rises, what do we hear? Turandot, Turandot, Turandot. To wait for one whole act, plus a quarter of a second, just to glimpse the heroine, let alone hear her, is practically a crime.
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