Opera review: Turandot

by Steve Smith of of West and Clear

When it was time for the curtain call at the end of the Fort Worth Opera Festival premiere of Puccini’s Turandot on Saturday night, a very un-Fort Worth-like thing occurred. When young soprano Sandra Lopez, who had dazzled the sold-out audience as Liu took her bow, the enthusiastic ovation she received was punctuated by two bouquets of flowers tossed from a box several tiers above the stage.

It’s not an uncommon thing to see on the European stage, but a rarer site in Fort Worth. Presumably, the flowers were by design and not an afterthought. But considering how her arias inspired ovation after ovation, maybe her fans were just caught up the moment. Maybe it was just something in the air, but the audience came prepared to have a good time, and they responded in a way that I haven’t seen at an opera in Fort Worth.

Certainly the cast and crew played their part. The performance elaborately staged performance had plenty of spectacle, thanks in part to the Guanhua Acrobats, whose routines fit seamlessly into the tale set in imperial China. The knife juggling, contortions, elaborate flips and balancing acts induced lots of spontaneous applause, much to the annoyance of some of the more “traditional” operagoers. A breach of opera decorum? Yes. An appropriate spontaneous display of appreciation? Absolutely.

Not that the evening was without its share of high opera moments. Soprano Carter Scott, who stepped in at the last moment to replace the ailing Elizabeth Bennett in the title role, might have been slightly upstaged by Lopez during the curtain call, but she was stunned in her own right. Scott, who last appeared in Fort Worth back in 2005 as Tosca, is no stranger to the role as Turandot, having performed it on the Santa Fe Opera stage as well. Bringing in a powerful soprano of Scott’s caliber on such short notice is a perfect example of the kind of magic that Darren Woods is spinning.

However, even though Turandot is an opera with two meaty female roles, the opera’s signature moment is actually a male role – Calaf’s Nessun Dorma aria, perhaps one of the most recognized tenor arias in opera. Tom Waits once said that the first time he heard Nessun Dorma, it was like giving a cigar to a five-year-old – he turned blue and cried. That’s the standard. If you aren’t left with the hair standing up on the back of your neck by the end of it, you’d better check your pulse.

That said, performing Nessun Dorma for a tenor is a little like assaulting Everest for a mountaineer. If you want to prove your mettle, it’s a requirement, but you approach it with a certain amount of trepidation. Tenor Dongwon Shin met the challenge on Saturday. His Nessun Dorma was the highlight of an incredible evening for him and for the Fort Worth Opera.

Was Turandot — as several opera patrons said after the show — the best opera ever staged in Fort Worth? If it wasn’t, it was a pretty strong contender. I saw the last staging of Turandot in Fort Worth in 1998, and this year’s staging – at least to me – demonstrates that opera has come a long way in the past 10 years. Bravo!