![]() ![]() In one scene they emulated the main cast’s stiffness before jauntily hopping around the stage, wobbling their joints like marionettes, laughing at each other as if to mock the narrative as it played out. Appearing in distinctly contemporary, black business suits, the trio mounted a crucial self-parody of Wilson’s distinctly austere style. Special mention must be made of the court ministers, renamed Jim, Bob, and Bill-instead of Puccini’s original Ping, Pang and Pong-as performed by baritone Adrian Timpau and tenors Julius Ahn and Joseph Hu. Similarly, Wilson’s no-frills set design offered a masterclass in thrift, as simple, slow-moving geometric shapes accomplished enormous tonal shifts throughout the narrative. Among the production’s most remarkable aspects was its lighting (also designed by Wilson), whose ubiquitous contrast of ghostly blue-white and deep, piercing red defined not only the opera’s staging, but also its energy and pace. It could be said that Wilson imagines opera as a genre wholly separate from thespianism, allying it instead with the visual arts of cinema, sculpture, and painting. Tamara Wilson (Turandot) in Canadian Opera Company’s Turandot-Photo: Michael Cooper ![]() With their faces painted sharp white under grotesquely exaggerated features, the cast looked and acted more like porcelain dolls than people. ![]() Dramatic beats were marked with little more than constrained twirls or mechanical gestures. Singers faced the audience head-on every moment of every scene, holding stiff, squared poses for minutes on end. Though minimal to the extreme and intensely hostile to any trace of naturalism, Wilson’s direction was immediately entrancing, immersing its audience in an abstracted world entirely distinct from mundane reality. It was precisely this dichotomy, however, that allowed Wilson to re-imagine not only Puccini’s opera but opera itself, all the while setting the ideal stage for a masterful musical performance. San francisco opera turandot series#As much as Wilson’s sparse, hard-edged aesthetic felt deeply at home with Turandot ’s bizarre vision of a cruel and otherworldly Beijing-in which the exiled Prince Calaf must survive Princess Turandot’s series of deadly trials before finally melting her heart-it was also starkly alien to what audiences have come to expect from Puccini’s lush and exotic score. San francisco opera turandot full#28 th) showcased the full force of legendary avant-garde director Robert Wilson’s genre-shattering impact on opera. Canadian Opera Company ’s ( COC) season-opening presentation of Puccini’s Turandot (seen Sept. ![]()
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