When the Royal Opera’s current run of Turandot ends in February, there will have been no fewer than 22 performances of Puccini’s unfinished final opera on the Covent Garden stage in less than a year. By opera house standards, that’s a remarkably big number, especially for a staging that is now more than 40 years old.
But it’s not hard to see why this Turandot keeps on returning. Puccini’s darkest, most ritualistic and choral opera is a showstopper shot through with musical colour, innovation and interest. In tough economic times for the art form, it offers guaranteed box office, due in no small part to the iconic tenor aria Nessun Dorma. What’s more, Andrei Serban’s 1984 production is a living theatrical classic, in which everything is played out within oppressive sets inhabited by shadowy watchers. It is confidently revived here by Jack Furness, with eye-catching orientalist choreography by Kate Flatt.
