Acclaimed director returns to Scottish Opera to take on "fraught" production of Puccini's Turandot
McVicar will confront the darkness and trauma in Puccini’s work head-on, and is refusing to excuse the opera’s difficult questions about desire, suffering and abuse of power.
Acclaimed director Sir David McVicar will return to Scottish Opera this autumn to stage a new production of Puccini’s Turandot, marking a 30-year creative partnership with the company.
This co-production with Irish National Opera, conducted by Scottish Opera Music Director Stuart Stratford, opens on October 22 at Theatre Royal Glasgow and transfers to Festival Theatre Edinburgh on November 11.
McVicar will confront the darkness and trauma in Puccini’s work head-on and is said to be refusing to excuse the opera’s difficult questions about desire, suffering and abuse of power.
Turandot was premiered 100 years ago in Milan and these performances mark the UK staged premiere of Franco Alfano’s original completion of the opera, without cuts or alterations. He was nominated by Puccini to finish the piece when he was aware that he would not be able to complete the opera before his untimely death.
Set in the 1930s at a wedding feast that never ends, this production of Turandot features the iconic aria ‘Nessun dorma’.
Danish soprano Trine Bastrup Møller makes her company debut in the role of Princess Turandot, who challenges her suitors to answer three riddles correctly, or else they will be executed. She is joined by Victor Starsky as Calaf, Insung Sim as Timur (shared with Graeme Broadbent), Scottish Opera favourites Hye-Youn Lee as Liù and Jamie MacDougall as Emperor Altoum, and The Chorus and The Children’s Chorus of Turandot.
Director Sir David McVicar, who first worked with the Company directing Idomeneo in 1996, said: ‘Turandot is a very complicated piece, and an extraordinary, fantastical story. It is fraught with racial stereotyping and questionable sexual politics.
“There are so many issues at play here, and we must also bear in mind that this is a fairytale, a fable, about relationships between men and women.
“We are doing the Alfano One ending because it solves so many of the problems of the sexual politics of Turandot. It’s about Turandot making up her own mind about what she wants, which totally changes the dynamic of the story and the characters, and it becomes so much more interesting as a piece of theatre.”
Scottish Opera Music Director Stuart Stratford said: ‘Opera companies very rarely perform the Alfano One ending, so we are making a huge statement by taking it on.”
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