Sexism and Orientalism in Puccini's Turandot by Elana Hedrych

Sexism and Orientalism in Puccini’s Turandot

“As contemporary audiences become increasingly sophisticated in their ability to discern negative ethnic stereotyping and inherent gender bias, one has to wonder at what point do we retire a problematic piece?” - Rob Buscher, Festival Director of Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival With soaring melodies of Orientalism and racist stereotyping, overt sexism and endorsement of rape culture, does Turandot have a place in the canon?

By Elana Hedrych December 2020 Professor Coppola Women & Power in Mozart’s Operas Hunter College

Act I of Turandot opens with a Mandarin announcing that anyone who wishes to marry Princess Turandot must answer three riddles. If they answer incorrectly, they will be beheaded. Before the start of the act, the Prince of Persia has failed and will be executed, setting the scene for a brutal, cold-hearted princess who aligns well with the Dragon Lady stereotype - a stereotype of East Asian women as strong, deceitful, and mysterious. The term Dragon Lady arose in America during the late 19th century with the passing of the Page Act of 1875, which dramatically reduced immigration of Chinese women and created the policing of immigrants around sexuality. It’s important to note that the executions are not entirely the doing of the princess, but from an order set in place by the Emperor and his ministers. While Turandot is represented as an executioner, she has tried to limit her exposure to the violence and pride of men, using the laws that were already set in place by the Emperor and his ministers. Is Turandot a cold, bloodthirsty Medusa who brings death to all who gaze upon her, or is the Emperor a corrupt ruler who allows a rule to be in place so that his daughter can be violated by the first man who properly navigates her riddles? The men in this opera are active participants and culprits in what can be seen as a complex and political sexual assault. Puccini made use of gong, xylophone, tam-tam, bells, and carillon in an attempt to create some kind of Oriental effect. There is lush use of orchestration, and a massive presence of choral singing throughout the opera. The gong in particular is typically utilized to portray China as cruel and savage, as it is used in association with the execution of foreign princes who incorrectly answer Turandot’s riddles.1

Ping-Hui Liao, “‘Of Writing Words for Music Which Is Already Made’: ‘Madama Butterfly, Turandot’, and Orientalism,” Cultural Critique, no. 16 (1990): pp. 31-59.

“Riddles are common in courtship tales because they may reconcile opposites, assert or undermine power, and convey sexual innuendo.” Valerie V Peterson 2

First cursing Turandot for her cruelty when she appears on the balcony of the palace, Calaf immediately falls in love with Turandot during the execution of the Prince of Persia. Ping, Pang, and Pong attempt to deter Calaf from risking his life, as they describe in detail the brutal execution and butchery of the princes, “...they’ll choke you, bleed you, torture you, flay you, slay you, skin you, slice you and disembowel you…” the triangle, celeste, glockenspiel, and xylophone are brought to the forefront, providing sharp, metallic, percussive sounds to heighten the minister’s warning, and amplify the savagery of the Chinese rule. Out of alliance to her ancestor, Turandot asserts that no man will ever be with her, so she can avenge Princess Lo-u-Ling. Due to external pressure from the men in the opera, Turandot provides a substantial reason for wanting to remain single. She advises Calaf to withdraw. In this moment, it’s clear that she doesn’t want to cause more bloodshed than necessary. Puccini made frequent use of the Chinese folk melody “Moo-Lee-Wha,” which means “The Jasmine Flower.” Puccini transforms the melody in various ways throughout Turandot, including at the climax, when Calaf employs the motif previously associated with Princess Turandot to voice his victory and power over the Princess. Though Turandot is nearly invisible throughout the first act, her presence is felt, feared, and heard with the use of Moo-Lee-Wha’s motif. The first occurrence of the melody is before the appearance of the Prince of Persia as he prepares to be executed, sung by the boy choir, accompanied by a rocking accompaniment by the

Valerie V Peterson, “Mythic Rhetoric: Love, Power, and Companionate Marriage in Puccini's Turandot,” (October 2014).

orchestra during La, sui monti dell’est.

Throughout Act I, Puccini emphasizes D (Calaf’s main key) as the leading tone to Eb (Turandot’s main key). After many attempts by Liù, Timur, Ping, Pang, and Pong to dissuade Calaf from pursuing Turandot, Calaf prepares to hit the gong and signifies that he is ready to risk his life to win Turandot. He roars her name three times, while Liù, Timur, Ping, Pang, and Pong repeatedly counter Calaf by singing “La Morte!” (‘Tis death!) after each repetition of “Turandot!” Calaf modulates away from Turandot’s home key of Eb minor, landing in D major, appropriating and maneuvering Turandot’s name as his own. The orchestra and choir briefly continue with gusto in Calaf’s home key of D major, giving the audience a sense of hope. The woodwinds play the motif of Moo-Lee-Wha, but in Calaf’s signature D major, as he and Puccini again appropriate what is Turandot’s, and the fragments they know as China. The D major tonality is quickly confiscated, and the orchestra thunderously plays in the key of Eb minor again as Turandot takes center stage.

The Chinese melodies found in Turandot are “phrased” by Puccini, which might tell one more about the Occident itself than about the Orient, since the Occident has already re-ordered and invented its own Orient. During In Questa Reggia when Turandot sings, “The enigmas are three, but death is one.” Calaf replies, dominant and confident: “The enigmas are three, but life is one.” With only one word changed, he throws this phrase back at Turandot in a higher key. This is a clear moment in which Calaf is “appropriating, displacing and mastering” Princess Turandot. The progression in pitch continues, as Turandot and Calaf compete again, in unison, soaring to a high C, given weight by a fermata.

Calaf’s strategy to contain and appropriate is suggestive of what Puccini does to the Oriental tunes he works with. It is the alien who has restored harmony to Oriental society, as Calaf is the savior who will bring about transformation to an unwell China, representing a West that sets Turandot and her people free from tyranny. Calaf, a prince in exile, desires to conquer

and establish order in the uncivilized land. Power, not love, may be his motivation from the beginning.3 Individual male sexual power is conflated with symbols of Western imperial power.4 If power is Calaf’s motivation, is Nessun Dorma an assertive declaration of lust or love, or is Calaf just relishing in his conquering of Turandot as she panics? Turandot has been very explicit in her desire to remain single, as she is traumatized from Lo-u-Ling’s experiences of violence at the hands of foreign men and wishes to avenge her. In Turandot, the audience watches as the Princess experiences a major trauma, and reliving deeply rooted ancestral trauma, as Calaf relishes in his power. Nessun Dorma is in D major, and the melody does not rely on the pentatonic scale, unlike Liù, Turandot, and the minister’s melodies. Calaf is not necessarily Western, but he is an outsider, and his music assists to brand him as lacking Eastern characteristics. Turandot and Calaf represent national stereotypes of China and the West respectively. In the 1920s, Europe was enjoying it’s economic and cultural prosperity and global expansion, while China in the same time period was suffering political and economic instability. Through the European lens, China was associated with barbarism and despotism. At the beginning of the opera, we see the streets of Peking lined with bloody stakes and skulls of those whom the princess has executed. The people of Peking are confused, but frequently become riled up during Turandot’s threats of violence to foreign princes. This is an image of China crafted from the mind of Puccini and his librettists, a view of China inherited from 20th Century colonialist cliches.

Ping-Hui Liao, “‘Of Writing Words for Music Which Is Already Made’: ‘Madama Butterfly, Turandot’, and Orientalism,” Cultural Critique, no. 16 (1990): pp. 31-59. 4 Ng, Maria. “The Taming of the Oriental Shrew: The Two Asias in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Turandot,” in A Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts of Madame Butterfly, U Toronto Press (2006): pg 178.

“The Dragon Lady’s characteristics oppose that of the China Doll; while the Doll is selfless and serving, the Dragon is selfish and brutal. …The opposite representation of East Asian women in popular media is that of the aggressive, sensual Dragon Lady, who is posed first as a challenge to Western power, but quickly brought to submission to ensure White dominance.” Turandot and Liù are two opposing East Asian stereotypes - if Turandot is the threatening Dragon Lady, then perhaps Liù is the China Doll - submissive, delicate, and overly emotional. These binary representations of East Asian women force them to be aggressive and cold or submissive and weak, without space for any complex or human middle ground.5 Liù sacrifices herself to avoid revealing Calaf’s identity to Turandot, opening up Turandot to love. Liù transforms Turandot - playing a role in melting the ice queen down to a warm, loving woman who can no longer kill foreign princes or threaten Calaf. In this Oriental fantasy, a Chinese woman is not strong enough to free herself from trauma and an evil murderous past, but must find a solution from outside - in this case, first through Liù and then Calaf. It may be that the death of Liù turns the Dragon Lady into the China Doll stereotype. Taking this concept further, it’s possible that Turandot transforms into Liù, with Liù living on in Turandot’s body. With the Princess’s independence and coldness throughout the piece, it’s hard to believe that she herself genuinely becomes the submissive, loving wife who ends up with Calaf. In the opera, Turandot’s transformation is meant to represent the freedom of the Chinese people. Puccini died having only completed the orchestration of Turandot up to the point of Liù’s death. Liù may be seen as Puccini’s “agent,” who has sacrificed herself in order to give birth to Turandot’s ability to love, and prepare her for marrying Calaf. Puccini was able to compose to the point of a climactic moment in Turandot - the moment where his agent sets in motion the

Joey Lee, “East Asian ‘China Doll’ or ‘Dragon Lady’?,” Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections, 2018.

union of Turandot and Calaf, of China and its other, allowing for the continued appropriation and incorporation of the other. It is important to note that Liù is not necessarily Chinese in Turandot, despite her Chinese name and strong alignment with the China Doll stereotype in direct opposition to the Princess. She is a slave serving the exiled Tartar king Timur, who is an outsider in the setting of the opera. Adding to the irony, the Chinese princess’s name, Turandot, is of Persian origin. Puccini’s Liù is based on a Chinese prototype of loyalty and friendship, and Puccini and his librettists took great attempts to transform Liù into yin, the female principle, while utilizing her character as an agent to criticize the “bloodthirsty” Chinese people. Liù’s affectionate, submissive, deeply loving character is in striking contrast to this “irrational” race that is enthralled by Turandot’s cruelty.6

“The climax of the drama is a figurative rape: the hero Calaf forces a kiss upon the icy Princess Turandot over her loud and clear objections, which action transforms her into a warm and loving wife … But that climactic kiss is still staged today as it was three decades ago, with its clear implication that Turandot can only achieve true womanhood if a man forces sex upon her.” - Valerie V Peterson 7

Once Turandot is unable to find out Calaf’s name and the two are set to marry, they are left alone, and he forces her to kiss him. As Calaf conquers and colonizes Turandot with a violent kiss, suddenly, she experiences true passion and wants to marry him. One could argue that it’s far from believable. Rather than representing true love, it seems to represent Calaf’s sexual

Ping-Hui Liao, “‘Of Writing Words for Music Which Is Already Made’: ‘Madama Butterfly, Turandot’, and Orientalism,” Cultural Critique, no. 16 (1990): pp. 31-59, https://doi.org/10.2307/1354344. 7 Valerie V Peterson, “Mythic Rhetoric: Love, Power, and Companionate Marriage in Puccini's Turandot,” (October 2014).

conquest, desire for Turandot to submit to him, and Calaf’s social hierarchy rank - he has won both sexual dominance over a cold, hard-to-get, Dragon Lady stereotype Turandot, and supremacy over what will be his palace.

“...nothing in Turandot's character has prepared us for the fact that at a single kiss her sexual instincts will completely overcome the hatred she has harbored her entire life. Nothing, that is, unless the opera's intended message is that women who claim to hate men really love them, and that every icy Turandot is simply waiting for a sufficiently audacious Calaf to assault her sexually. …The standard interpretation of Turandot is disturbing enough because of what it suggests about the appropriate relations of power and sexuality between men and women.” -Jack M. Balkin8

It’s important to note that Turandot is frequently casted with nearly all white performers, despite the opera taking place in China and the majority of the characters being Chinese. There is a long history of erasing Asian actors in films, yellowface, and whitewashing in popular culture. Blatant yellowface is scarcer in recents years, but seems to have been replaced with another strategy - altering lead characters to allow for white leads without the use of prosthetics and obvious makeup. Whitewashing continues to be common in the present day, for example: the casting of Scarlett Johansson in the 2017 movie, Ghost in a Shell, which was based on an Anime series made up of entirely Japanese characters. To address Rob Buscher’s quote: is it true that the common audience has become increasingly aware of negative ethnic stereotyping and inherent gender bias? And if they have, does that mean we should retire Puccini’s Turandot because it’ll horrify a “socially aware” 8

Jack M. Balkin, “Turandot’s Victory,” Yale Journal of Law & Humanities, (January 1990).

audience? Or does that mean that we should keep it in the canon, since a “socially aware” audience would be able to identify and therefore condemn it’s negative themes? On the other side of the coin: if the common audience is unable to discern race and gender stereotyping and bias, should Turandot stay in the canon at the risk of reinforcing harmful stereotypes and giving dangerous rhetoric yet another platform? Do we believe that keeping Turandot in the canon would be a learning experience for the common audience, and that they will leave the opera house better than they walked in? Is this learning experience only possible with an informative disclaimer before the performance of Turandot? The art that we consume is a source of information that largely shapes our society’s culture. Would opera houses and directors realistically participate in public musicology in order to facilitate social change?

Liao, Ping-Hui. “‘Of Writing Words for Music Which Is Already Made’: ‘Madama Butterfly, Turandot’, and Orientalism.” Cultural Critique, no. 16 (1990): 31–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354344. Peterson, Valerie V. “Mythic Rhetoric: Love, Power, and Companionate Marriage in Puccini's Turandot,” October 2014. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=com_articles. Ng, Maria. “The Taming of the Oriental Shrew: The Two Asias in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Turandot,” in A Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts of Madame Butterfly, U Toronto Press (2006): 170-180. Hunter College e-book Jack M. Balkin, “Turandot’s Victory,” Yale Journal of Law & Humanities, January 1990: 229-431. https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&http sredir=1&article=1038&context=yjlh Lee, Joey. “East Asian ‘China Doll’ or ‘Dragon Lady’?” Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections, 2018.