Strasbourg (AFP) – An oppressive dictatorship based on image and technology: the Strasbourg opera transposes Puccini’s Turandot into communist China, adding to it the very current issue of consent in love.
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Almost a hundred years after the death of the Italian composer, in 1924, the director Emmanuelle Bastet offers until June 20 at the Opéra national du Rhin (ONR) a contemporary reinterpretation of his last opera, unfinished, which will also be presented in Mulhouse at the beginning of July and in Dijon next season.
The original tale taken up by Puccini takes place in Beijing, at the foot of the Forbidden City, in an ancestral China where the emperor’s daughter, the cruel Princess Turandot, imposes a challenge on her suitors: find the answer to three enigmas. The winner will have his hand, but the many losers are punished with death…
Transposed to the 21st century, the drama presented at the ONR opens on an oppressive street in China, with intimidating police and a crowd calling for a capital execution.
“It’s an opera that also talks about violence, the violence of a society”, explains Emmanuelle Bastet to AFP.
In red scarves, the children of the mastery of the ONR portray very realistic communist “pioneers”, in a choreography which seems straight out of the “Cultural Revolution”.
The scenography is also inspired by the omnipresence of surveillance technologies in China, a country which has an average of 370 cameras per 1,000 inhabitants, according to the research institute Comparitech, which is at the top of the world ranking.
The three Ping Pang Pong ministers, the only comic characters in the work, circulate on stage on an electric scooter, with a camera attached to the helmet.
“Enslavement” by the image
Glued to their mobile phones, the singers follow and comment on the plot as one man.
During a stay in this country, Ms. Bastet said she was struck by the “absence of gaze” of the inhabitants: “in the metro, people are immersed in their laptops and suddenly there is no possible exchange “.
Turandot, who does not appear on stage in the first act, appears there on video on giant screens, like an advertising character.
In this dictatorship of the image, “Calaf will undergo this violence, and falls fascinated, in an almost sickly way, by the portrait of this woman who appears in large”, comments Ms. Bastet.
“I wanted to question the current era and also talk about contemporary violence,” she told AFP. “The weapons of today are not necessarily usual weapons but rather communication, surveillance, manipulation by image, by screens, and the enslavement of crowds.”
“It’s a way of talking about today’s China but not only, it’s about all the autocracies, all the somewhat authoritarian regimes that use these modern weapons to exercise their control.”
Near rape on stage
Having managed to solve the riddles, Calaf, supported by the emperor, demands Turandot’s hand and imposes a kiss on him, presented here as a scene of rape.
The staging “wanted to show that there was something very violent in this kiss”, comments Alain Perroux, the director of the ONR.
“It is true that today these forced kisses raise much more questions than at the time of Puccini, and with good reason: there is the question of consent which arises”, he notes.
Turandot, powerfully interpreted by the Norwegian Elisabeth Teige, is shocked, “especially since she had invented this whole story of enigma in memory of the rape of her ancestor. It is as if she were reliving this nightmare”.
Unusually, the opera is performed with the full finale by Franco Alfano, who was entrusted with the ending of Turandot, Puccini having died before he had composed the last two scenes. This end had been planed by the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini.
The Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Swiss-Venezuelan Domingo Hindoyan, who is very familiar with French formations.
“In France especially, I find that the orchestras read the music very well, they go very deeply into the music. I feel very comfortable,” he told AFP.
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