For once, Turandot was too Chinese. When organizers approached authorities in Beijing about staging the Puccini opera in the Forbidden City--long a dream of many conductors--officials initially balked. They were not deterred by the opera itself or even, in principle, by the risk of performing it inside one of the country's most valuable landmarks. Instead authorities worried that the director--mainland filmmaker Zhang Yimou, taking his first stab at the genre--did not have the experience to handle such a high-profile project. Only after several months did officials at the Ministry of Culture grant permission for a week of performances.

Their decision has ensured that this $15 million production of Turandot will be the most Chinese ever. Though Puccini had never visited the Middle Kingdom--he based his opera about a cruel princess on an Italian fairy tale--the story is meant to unfold in the Forbidden City. Its staging there has thus been hailed with intercontinental gongs and whistles. Organizers boast of a "once-in-a-lifetime experience." (They also promise that laserdisc, CD and vcd recordings will be released by Oct. 15.) The eight performances, from Sept. 5 to 13, have nearly sold out. With tickets going for as much as $1,750, the production is almost guaranteed to turn a profit. The show has, in fact, become more event than art: audience members are in large part paying to see a fantasy made real.

The production is stubbornly untraditional. Last year Zhang, the Oscar-nominated director of Raise the Red Lantern and Keep Cool, freely conceded his qualms at tackling opera--a genre he knew only in the bastardizations of Cultural Revolution agitprop. But the choice turned out to be inspired. Rather than fumbling to learn unfamiliar European conventions, he introduced elements of Peking Opera to his version of Turandot, which debuted at Florence's Teatro Communale last spring with Zubin Mehta conducting (as he will in Beijing). The resulting melange played to Zhang's strengths as a filmmaker. "The two cultures [Italian and Chinese] are just like two separate mountains," he told journalists last July. "My work is like the tunnel through which I can travel freely between the two." Critics and performers alike enthused about the innovations--more symbolic, animated movement; bright and elaborate costumes; Chinese ballet dancers.

Puccini, with his flimsy knowledge of China, took even greater liberties. Turandot, his final opera, was actually inspired by Turandotte, written by the Venetian author Carlo Gozzi in 1762. The story reads like an archetypal European myth: a disguised prince seeks the hand of the haughty Princess Turandot, who kills all suitors who cannot answer her three riddles; though he succeeds, he promises to sacrifice himself if she can learn his name, and wins her for good only after a kiss. Some Chinese critics have complained that the princess bears none of the grace and humility of a true Chinese lady. Most other observers have long accepted that Puccini's work takes place in that hazy, mythic Orient that has for centuries existed only in the mind of the West.

Nevertheless, everyone associated with Zhang's idiosyncratic production is acting as if Turandot is coming home. The extravaganza has been wrought by promoter Michael Ecker's Opera on Original Site (OOS), a Vienna-based organization whose first project brought Verdi's Aida to the pyramids at Luxor in 1987. The backdrop this time is similarly opulent: eight open-air performances will take place in Taimiao, the ancestral temple just outside the ancient city's Imperial Palace, where the last emperor, Pu Yi, was wed in 1924 (and where the New Age musician Yanni performed in 1997). More than 1,000 people are involved in the show, including local Chinese singers and extras; 100 dancers will replace the 12 who performed in Florence. Ming-dynasty drums will herald the opening of each show, and hand-painted panels covered in gold-leaf and red will take the place of a stage curtain.

PAGE 1  |  PAGE 2