travelswithalice

September 14, 2013

Turandot at Covent Garden

After our beautiful late summer in Milan, London seemed particularly dreary. It was rainy and chilly when we arrived and our hotel room wasn't ready.

We were given a temporary room- it smelled and had a light bulb missing- just so we could change for the evening to go to the opera.

Things got a lot better later. The room we got back to that night was a beautiful one overlooking Hyde Park.

The opera was brilliant. We had seen Lise Lindstrom as Turandot once before at La Scala where she was very cooly received by the famously unappreciative Milan audience. But here, at this performance, she was enthusiastically applauded by a full house.

She sang with brassy authority, owning the role without hesitation. It was easy to believe she was that shrill-voiced, cold-hearted bitch, later turning into the petulant, uncertain spoiled brat, still stubbornly unwilling to concede defeat.

I fear that any Calaf's Nessun Dorma will be compared, for a very long time, to that of the late Pavarotti. I'm sure this one was excellent but I barely noticed it.

The slave girl Liu was sung beautifully and to much applause.

The staging, obsessed with images of death and blood and decapitation, was to me most memorable when dark and moodily lit by lanterns or by shafts of smoky light. This threw into focus the starkly simple costumes for the prickly princess, consisting mainly of red or white flowing silk kimonos, accessorized by a cold, white face mask and a fall of long, straight, black hair that whipped behind her like a fierce tail.

As it was our first time in London's Royal Opera House, we hammed it up at intermission, at the bar.

It was cold and damp when we got out, and there were precious few taxis to be had, so we checked out the nearby pubs, settling on PJ's, a cheerful bar full of convivial late nighters.

Labels: Covent Garden, London, opera, PJ's, The Dorchester, Turandot