Terrifying Intensity
Puccini's 'Turandot' -
reviewed by
ROBERT ANDERSON'... brimful of imagination ...'
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Poverty alone prevents my flight to Australia. Small matter that I have missed Her Majesty and
the Commonwealth Games. Far more important is that fact that so distant a continent seems to have
retained equal respect for operatic stage and pit long after we in Europe handed over the action
to politics, pantomime or parsimony. Yet Puccini is alone to blame if Turandot would not be
the first booking I made. His ever-lurking masochism is allowed to run riot in the torture and death
of the slave girl Liù, and it is no wonder he took two years in vain contemplation how he
might complete the work after her merciless despatch.
The death of Liù (Amanda Thane) in Act III of Puccini's 'Turandot', with Kenneth Collins (Calaf, left) and Donald Shanks (Timur). DVD screenshot © 2006 Opus Arte
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Copyright © 3 May 2006
Robert Anderson, London UK
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