Turandot
A few years ago I tried getting tickets to Zeffirelli’s production of Turandot at the Forbidden City in Beijing. Since I lived nearby at the time, I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to get tickets but unfortunately, the Big Boss was keeping me busy, and other things distracted me and I ended up not going. However, I did finally manage to see a Zeffirelli production of Turandot, yesterday at the Metropolitan Opera in NY. Yesterday’s production was spectacular in its own way, I suppose. But throughout the performance I kept trying not to think of the Beijing performance that I’d missed. I also kept comparing what I was hearing to the recordings of Maria Callas I grew up with. There is No Comparison. Plus Maria Callas was beautiful, whereas yesterday it was difficult for me to reconcile the libretto, which described the sublime beauty of Turandot the ice princess, with the fat lady person doing the singing on stage.
Anyway, the fights were fun to watch. There was an older couple directly in front of me on a first date. They didn’t know each other very well, judging from the lame small talk the guy was making (“Oh, you’re a very polite person; I like that very much. Because I’m also a very polite person, just like you…”). There was little chemistry between them; a few minutes after they sat down, the woman moved one seat over and put her coat and purse in the middle seat. The guy kept trying to touch her shoulder from across the chasm, and she tolerated this. She let him hold her hand in the second act. Then during the end of the third act, while Turandot was experiencing love on stage, this guy tried doing something that I couldn’t see (because I left my X-Ray Vision Goggles at home and couldn’t see through the seats) but she reacted violently enough that I could feel the row of seats shaking, and she stormed out just before the final chorus.
Which is good, because then I could concentrate on the final chorus, which has special meaning for me because it was used in a famous Nescafe coffee commercial in Japan ten years ago, which is one of my favorite commercials of all time. I felt an strange urge after that to sit on a tatami room floor, gazing out over a bamboo forest, drinking coffee (if you haven’t seen the commercial, ignore this).
Speaking of stupid, the New York Metropolitan Opera has a new policy where male patrons are not allowed to bring bags into the auditorium. Females are allowed in unmolested. But I had a bag with a paperback book in it, and they wanted to hold on to it, to be reclaimed later. Then they said I could carry the book in with me, but not if it was in the bag. So I went into a corner, removed the book from the bag, folded the bag, put it into my pocket, and walked in carrying the book, which they didn’t look at, and which for all they knew could have been hollowed out and filled with explosives. Then I pulled out the bag and put the book back into it after I’d sat down. And of course, for some reason, female patrons were exempt from any of this and were carrying backpacks and all sorts of other things. No, there could never ever be an assault on a theater by 18 female suicide bombers.
Every time I go to the Met I keep promising myself it’s the last time. Well, maybe after I see Parsifal next month.
