Love and Let Live

New Jersey Opera Theater brings Puccini’s beloved ‘Turandot’ to the stage in Princeton and New Brunswick.

By: Megan Sullivan
   Love makes people do crazy things.
   In Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot, the young Prince of Tartary is willing to risk his life in pursuit of the unattainable Turandot, daughter of the Emperor of Peking. Any man who desires to wed Turandot must first answer her three riddles. If he fails, he will be beheaded. Oddly enough, the first time the Prince of Tartary sets eyes on Turandot is as she orders the execution of a failed suitor. Despite this, he immediately falls in love, crying out her name with joy as the crowd screams with horror when the Prince of Persia loses his head.
   "Attraction has always transcended logic," says Ira Siff, director of the New Jersey Opera Theater’s semi-staged production of Puccini’s final masterpiece. "If you are so turned on by somebody, I guess no matter how heinous their behavior is, you just kind of lose control of your senses."
   Turandot will be performed at McCarter Theatre Center’s Matthews Stage in Princeton March 4 and the State Theatre in New Brunswick March 11. The cast includes such internationally acclaimed artists as Sharon Sweet (Turandot), Allan Glassman (Calaf), Barbara Shirvis (Liu) and Raymond Aceto (Timur), and NJOT Music Director Steven Mosteller conducts.
   The ice princess has reasons for her frigidness — she explains how her ancestor of millennia past, Lo-u-Ling, was ravished and murdered by a foreigner. Now, out of revenge, she has sworn to never let any man possess her. Hence the impossible riddle game she devised to avoid surrendering to love.
   Turandot was left unfinished at Puccini’s death, the remainder of the work completed by Franco Alfano. Puccini had begun composing it in 1921, and in about three years had finished the opera up to the final duet. He died in November of 1924, however, from complications of a surgery he underwent for throat cancer. Alfano used Puccini’s sketches to finish the work.
   Director Mr. Siff believes the libretto, written by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, is fascinating but he’s still a little uncertain about its ending.
   "It’s a fairy tale at that point, I don’t understand why (the Prince) doesn’t tell (Turandot) to get lost… ," he says. "Without him, his father and slave-girl are going to be again wandering around begging and starving and he’s their salvation. Now he’s going to get beheaded, which doesn’t make a great deal of sense. That’s the tension in the opera — how can he possibly answer these riddles? And he’s a tenor, and we all know tenors are not that intelligent," he says, laughing.
   To Turandot’s dismay, the Prince refuses to desist and answers her three riddles correctly. When she cries out in anger, the Prince offers that if she can learn his name before sunrise, he will die. This proves harder than Turandot had imagined. When he initially entered the city, the Prince had stumbled upon his long-lost father, Timur, the deposed king of Tartary. The Prince urged his father not to speak his name — Calaf — because he fears the Chinese rulers who have conquered Tartary. Timur’s slave-girl, Liu, stands by his side, as Timur is now blind. She is secretly in love with Calaf, because he smiled upon her once a long time ago.
   Soldiers drag Timur and Liu to the palace because they were seen speaking to the Prince. Turandot orders them to speak, and Liu declares that she alone knows the Prince’s name, but will not reveal it. Liu is tortured but remains silent, her love of the Prince putting strength in her heart. Before stabbing herself with a soldier’s dagger, Liu tells Turandot that she too shall learn love.
   "Liu gives up everything for the love of the unnamed prince, even though she never has a single hope to atone her love," says Ms. Shirvis, who is taking on the role of Liu for the first time. "That’s pretty super-human."
   She describes her character as an incredibly noble young woman, selfless with unshakeable integrity. "I honestly always thought after Liu dies, and it’s not just because it’s my character, I sort of feel like, ‘Who the hell cares about those two selfish people?’" Ms. Shirvis says of Turandot and Calaf. "It’s just this problem with the drama of it, which is a major reason Puccini didn’t finish it. What do you do thematically after that, what’s believable?
   "I haven’t studied the role of Turandot, so Sharon Sweet probably has a different view," she adds. "I suspect after (playing Liu), and not just being in the audience, I’ll have a different opinion."
   A successful operatic soprano, happily married with two children, Ms. Shirvis can’t directly identify with Liu’s plight as a slave on the bottom of the social ladder. "In real life, Liu would probably never be in Turandot’s presence and for her to speak to her is probably unprecedented," she says. An interesting parallel Ms. Shirvis drew, however, is that she will be singing alongside world renowned opera diva Ms. Sweet. Ms. Sweet has sung the role of Turandot around the world, including with the Metropolitan Opera and in a special production in the Forbidden City, Beijing. "I don’t know her at all, but I’ve been aware of her a very long time and she’s great, I’m a great fan of hers," Ms. Shirvis says. "So it’s kind of humbling for me to sing with her on stage — I can use that respect and awe, if you will."
   Liu is probably the shortest role Ms. Shirvis has sung in a long time, compared to some of her other roles like Leila in Les pecheurs de perles for Kentucky Opera or Madama Butterfly with the Eastern Music Festival. That doesn’t make it an easy role; her several beautiful arias certainly have their demands vocally. Other roles among the many she’s performed include Tatyana in Eugene Onegin with Cleveland Opera, Nedda in I Pagliacci with Toledo Opera and Alice Ford in Falstaff for New Jersey Opera Theater.
   Upon graduating from Manhattan School of Music, Ms. Shirvis began her career at New York City Opera, where she sang for a decade and met her husband, baritone Stephen Powell. Now living in West Chester, Pa., where Mr. Powell grew up, she home-schools their two boys, as she and her husband are often on the road.
   Ms. Shirvis, who will again play Liu in a fully staged production six months from now in Kentucky, has seen Turandot "about a million times," she says. "It’s one of the very best in opera repertoire. It’s just rock and roll — great tunes, the orchestra colors, layers of characters, ghosts flitting by, the ministers Ping, Pang and Pong, their shtick… just a piece you want to put on and blast."
   Being such a complicated work, aside from just musically, it’s a challenge to put on a semi-staged production of Turandot. The NJOT production still includes costuming and some props, as Mr. Siff says it would be hard to stage without creating the authentic Chinese feel inherent in the piece. The orchestra and chorus will be behind the action on stage instead of in the pit, along with the principals, supernumeraries and dancers.
   "I love Puccini and I love ‘Turandot’ musically, but it’s a toughie when you don’t have the spectacle," Mr. Siff says. "In semi-staging, I try to bring out strong characterization, especially in this fairy tale where most of the characters are a little bit less natural.
   "So you have to pull out the elements that are there in the characters that are more natural, like Liu the slave girl who’s very sympathetic," he continues. "Or, look for the motivation of Turandot’s behavior rather than just deal with the fact that she’s an ice princess, why she’s an ice princess… how her aggression is a cover for being actually afraid of this and attracted to (Calaf). That makes it a little more interesting."
   Mr. Siff turned to stage directing in 2000, with Tosca (starring Aprile Millo) as his first production. He currently teaches and coaches privately in New York and through programs internationally, and writes features and reviews for Opera News.
   The native New Yorker grew up on the standing room line of the old Metropolitan Opera, worshiping the famous singers of the ’60s. A graduate of Cooper Union, with a degree in fine arts, Mr. Siff began to study voice and made his debut as a tenor in 1970. In 1981, he founded La Gran Scena Opera Co. di New York, an opera spoof company with which he actually sang an excerpt from Turandot. "I sang the very hard entrance aria that Turandot sings that’s notoriously hard for soprano," he recounts. "I could toss it off and nobody could believe a guy could sing that high. It was an amazing stunt."
   The work in Turandot is definitely challenging vocally, with extremely high notes for both soprano and tenor. "It has elements of blazing Italian opera melody to be sung full throttle and then these gorgeous choruses that employ the Asian tunes that Puccini borrowed, plus Oriental harmonic structures," Mr. Siff says. "It’s just gorgeous and the choruses are beyond beautiful."
New Jersey Opera Theater presents a semi-staged production of Puccini’s Turandot at McCarter’s Matthews Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, March 4, 3 p.m., and State Theatre, 15 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, March 11, 3 p.m. Tickets cost $43-$65 (McCarter Theatre) and $30-$65 (State Theatre). A special champagne reception with the artists after the performances is available for $90. For McCarter tickets, call (609) 258-2787 or on the Web: www.mccarter.org. State Theatre: (732) 246-7469 or on the Web: www.statetheatre.com. For additional information, call New Jersey Opera Theater, (609) 799-7700. On the Web: www.njot.org