Author: Mona Day

LA Opera will present Giacomo Puccini’s spectacular Turandot, one of the grandest of all operas, from May 18 through June 8. Puccini’s  final opera showcasing the magnificent music of Italy’s last great operatic composer created at the height of his maturity and technical mastery has continued to draw standing ovations over the last century. 

When Puccini’s untimely death in 1924 left his final opera unfinished, composer Franco Alfano was commissioned to create the ending for its world premiere at Milan’s La Scala in 1926, and his version has the standard finale. 

As a fairy tale set in legendary China, the opera is a departure from the composer’s verismo image and reflects the European fascination with the exotica of Orientalism that shaped 19th-century European arts.  Puccini had already explored it in Madama Butterfly, and now  re-visits it with a richer, more exotic palette.

Baron Edoardo Fassini-Camossi, Italy’s former Italian diplomat to China had given Puccini a music box that played four Chinese melodies, three of which Puccini incorporated into this opera, with the most memorable of these being the folk melody Mò Li Hūa ‘Jasmine Flower’, which serves as a leitmotif for Princess Turandot.  Eight of the themes from Turandot appear to be based on traditional Chinese music and anthems.

However, as elsewhere the Orientalism of the opera remains remains rooted in the West, and remains China as seen by Europeans.  The plot’s central dramatic moment is the life and death confrontation between the Princess Turandot and the Unknown Prince posed by the three riddles which must be correctly answered for the prince to escape execution  are rooted in the enigmas in the classical tradition of Ancient Greece, and the comedic characters of the ministers  Ping, Pang and Pong are straight out of Italy’s commedia del arte tradition.

For many years, the government of the People’s Republic of China forbade performance of Turandot because to them it portrayed China and the Chinese unfavorably.  They finally relented for the international collaboration Turandot at the Forbidden City performed for eight nights in September 1998.  Conducted by Zubin Mehta, the production featured opulent sets, even using soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army as extras. 

The opera’s celebrated aria Nessun dorma has become a staple of operatic recitals, with Luciano Pavarotti taking it beyond the operatic world by performing it for a global general audience at the 1990 World Cup, and the Three Tenors performed it at three subsequent World Cup Finals. Many crossover and pop artists have continued to perform and record it, and it has been used in the soundtracks of numerous films.

A co-production of San Francisco Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago, the LA production is new to Los Angeles. Turandot’s soprano role is demanding both in its range – from vulnerability to the ice-cold princess of  her bloody reign.  It must also keep the audience attention  and audience sympathy from being upstaged by the other soprano – the selfless Liu tugging at the audience’s heartstrings. Angela Meade is up for this this challenging role, with Russell Thomas as her fearless suitor.

Conducted by LA Opera’s Music Director James Conlon, the production features stage designs by David Hockney, long associated with Southern California, creating the splendor and spectacle of imperial China. 

Turandot is sung in Italian with English subtitles, with a running time of two hours and 55 minutes which includes two intermissions.  There will be six performances of Turandot, all at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

For more information about the production is available at LAOpera.org/Turandot.

LA Opera will present a beloved staple of the opera repertoire, Giuseppe Verdi’s romantic tragedy La Traviata, from April 6 through 27.

The story of La Traviata, The Fallen Woman,  follows the Parisian courtesan Violetta Valéry whose love affair with Alfredo Germont offers her an unexpected taste of true love, but also devastating consequences when Alfredo’s father intervenes.

The story is based on the life of a real woman Marie Duplessis who rose from poverty to become one of 19th-century Paris’s most celebrated courtesans before dying from tuberculosis in her prime at age 23. Writer Alexandre Dumas based his romantic novel La Dame aux Camélias on their brief affair and subsequently adapted the novel into a hugely successful play upon which Verdi based his opera.

Marie’s tragically short life continues to both haunt and inspire creative expression in  film from the silent era to modern times, including the 1936 Greta Garbo classic Camille, the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, and the 2001 musical Moulin Rouge! Franco Zeffrelli directed  a film of the opera in 1982 starring LA Opera’s Placido Domino. 

Since its 1853 premiere, La Traviata has won the hearts of generations of opera fans with its memorable music with deep emotional resonance highlighted by the  prelude,  and  showstopping arias like Violetta’s Sempre libera to make it one of the most popular operas in the repertoire. 

One of 1850s trio of Verdi’s most popular operas, La Traviata is an example of French influenced romantic realism that was calculated to test the moral tolerance of its contemporary audience. The Parisian drawing rooms were habited by men like Germont who had no problems while carousing and gambling themselves, had no problem seeing the courtesan, an epitome of selfless love as morally inferior.  When Traviata first played in London, the theater provided no translation of the libretto, fearing that might cause moral offense. 

But history has proven the last laugh to be Violetta’s and Verdi’s, as both sing their way into immortality as the beloved La Traviata.

Music Director James Conlon will conduct five of the six performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with Louis Lohraseb conducting on April 18. The production, new to Los Angeles, premiered in San Francisco Opera in 2022.  Directed by Shawna Lucey, it  stars Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Violetta and  Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan as her lover Alfredo. 

The opera is sung in Italian with English subtitles. The running time is  approximately two hours and 55 minutes, including two intermissions.

For more information and tickets, please visit LAOpera.org/Traviata.