Jonas Kaufmann's Puccini album: making the familiar unexpected

Does the world really need another Puccini album? Probably not. But opera-lovers as a group are very ready to cry, with Lear, "O reason not the need!" And Jonas Kaufmann, together with Antonio Pappano, has recorded a disc that is more than just another Puccini album. This is, in no small part, due to the luxury of having the very fine orchestra and chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia on board with the project. Under Pappano's baton, the orchestral contributions to this album do much to set it apart. This is no mere window-dressing or accompaniment, no mere setting for the voice; this is drama and commentary at once, blood and bones and breath. Kaufmann's work is also very fine, and, in places, nothing less than hair-raising. Although the album includes several of the most famous staples of the dramatic tenor's repertoire, it is in the lesser-known pieces, and in some unexpected moments, that Kaufmann's artistry is most interesting, and most effective.

Listening Library: Turandot

There's nothing like blasting an opera on the stereo to help oneself settle into a new place; this is a credo by which I proudly live. And I have found it to be particularly salutary in the eerie quiet of a carpeted house. (I'm still suffering from NYC-withdrawal.) Turandot may seem an odd choice to inaugurate my listening sessions here. It is, by almost any standard, one of the most unloveable of operas. Being unfinished, it's in many ways an oddly unfulfilled work. Moreover, it is, even by the criteria of opera's mostly-nineteenth-century standard repertory, astonishingly sexist and racist/Orientalist. It's a mess. However. It is--to me--musically fascinating. (Lots of Aida productions have managed to leave the banks of the Nile behind; I'm waiting for Turandot to make a more decisive break from China.) The score, evocative and experimental, not only shows Puccini's technical mastery, but shows him pushing the expressive potential of that mastery in new ways. I am a well-documented sucker for all the emotional manipulation of Puccini's mid-career standards, and believe them to be unfairly mired in a largely kitschy production history (cf. William Berger). But Turandot, with its disturbed characters, disturbing libretto, and unquiet musical undercurrents, manages to an unusual degree to transcend its own surface narrative, at least for me as a listener. It has also benefitted from what has to be one of the great vocal lineups of opera recording history.

Il suo nome è...

When pressed to name my favorite singers, I usually (after a deep sigh) begin a list so long that it threatens to become meaningless for my hapless listener. I do slightly better when asked to name my favorite interpreters of specific operatic roles. Calaf, for instance. He's not an easy character vocally or psychologically (as Mr. Domingo once said, "He's a little bit crazy, that boy!") But Puccini tenors have a way of making me go weak at the knees, and this crazy prince is no exception, from "Padre, mio padre!" to "Hai vinto tu!" I like to think that he's won over, not by a "horrible fascination," as Liu says, but by the fear in the princess's eyes, and the conviction that she can and must be a warm, interesting human being... and that he's the one to drag her down from her tragic heaven. And so, the mesmerizing melodies spin out, in longing, in anger, in hope, in love. I would love to hear Fabio Armiliato's Calaf, but there's no recording yet. In the meantime... who IS Calaf?

Grandi, enormi, ed imponenti

A 1987 New York Times article heralding the opening of the Zeffirelli production of Turandot, after a rather awed description of its marvels, concluded that friend and foe alike could not fail to gasp. By 2002 a different critic for the paper was calling it "a veritable symbol of operatic excess." Well, perhaps. Acrobats and parade dragons and dancers with parasols and silk scarves (not to mention gilded pagodas, tiered staircases, and rotating platforms over symmetrical pools) are not all necessary to an effective production of Turandot. But I think the formalized excess with which the ice princess hedges herself round (and about which Ping, Pang, and Pong complain so unforgettably in Act II!) forms a rather nice contrast to the passion of her nameless suitor who has nothing left to lose--except, of course, his life.