Puccini: Turandot – China National Centre for the Performing Arts

   in Opera Now (Apr, 2017)
Puccini’s Turandot was filmed at the NCPA in Beijing in 2013 and offers unrivalled spectacle. In fact director Chen Xinyi’s production plays the opera as straight as I’ve ever seen it and the fairy story element works very well. She makes full use of the stage’s hydraulics to impressive effect, and Mo Xiaomin’s costumes are unbelievably lavish: they must have cost the equivalent of a small country’s GDP.

The serried chorus generally stands and sings, but oh, what a stunning sound; and Daniel Oren leads a very assured and well-paced performance of the score. Sun Xiuwei sings Turandot and starts with assured phrasing which is soon pushed by the climaxes, which …