Turandot

Milan heard it first, then Dresden, Vienna, Rome, Rimini, Buenos Aires, Berlin. Last week it was given its U. S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan--Turandot, posthumous opera of Giacomo Puccini, composer of Madame Butterfly, La Boheme, Tosca. The Metropolitan spared no expense and achieved a gorgeous spectacle--first the rambling walls of the Imperial Palace against a sandy Peking sky and a mumbling Chinese crowd gathered to hear a mandarin read the death decree of the youthful Prince of Persia who has failed to solve the three enigmas of the cruel Princess Turandot; dusk, and the great sword sharpened for the Prince's neck and the mob crying for compassion. Princess Turandot, icy white, on a Palace balcony, signals to the executioners to proceed. An unknown prince, thrilled by her beauty, is determined to win her or die by the selfsame enigmas. The second act: Ping, Pang and Pong, comic ministers, jabber of the seven thousand centuries of China's glorious past, of Turandot's 13 suitors, headless now, who had dared desire her. A square out side the Palace with steps upon steps mounting the depth of the stage, the bearded emperor high on his throne, mandarins in their gaudiest best, eight wise men with their silken scrolls, are mise en scene for Turandot, cold, disdainful, asking her riddles, and, steps below, the unknown prince, prompted by love, guessing right. Then Palace Garden on a summer night -- Turandot, icy still, unwilling to abide by the terms of her own contract, awakened by a kiss. The steps to the throne again -- the Emperor and all his people gathered once more to see Turandot lead in Calaf, Prince of the Tartars, and announce his name as Love. Opinions for the most part were in perfect accord. The production itself was lavish beyond compare, Maria Jeritza was wonderfully effective as Turandot, so glinty cold as to send the shivers down 4,000 spines as she shrilled her desire to avenge all men. Giacomo Lauri-Volpi was a loud, adequately heroic Calaf. But there were none of those sweet, curving melodies for either of them to sing, no tender suavities to linger over and fondle. Choruses here and there excelled the earlier Puccini's, but the score as a whole seemed thick, noisy, lacking in coherence, stretched this way and that to cover three acts for which there was insufficient substance. Not the old Puccini at all, it seemed, until the concluding love duet and finale which was not his but his friend's, Franco Alfano's, who wrote it after his death.