TURANDOT

“Amor! O sole! Vita! Eternità! Luce del mondo è amore! Ride e canta nel sole l’infinita nostra felicità!”

Turandot (Act III, Finale) an oath: she can only marry the man of royal blood who solves three riddles that she herself will dictate. Whoever fails will die. The rules and tyranny of a woman who is incapable of love, who refuses to become human, instead preferring to be an institution and who imposes a surveillance state in which men are sacrificed.

A monumental, evocative and orientalist scenography with an extremely harsh and oppressive setting, full of beauty and formal balance, heighten the epic poetry of the story.

Puccini was unable to finish the third act of the score. He died in 1924 in Brussels before he could finish the final duet and it was his assistant, Franco Alfano, who completed the score. The first performance of the piece at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1926 was a kind of requiem for Puccini. Arturo Toscanini conducted the work until the last notes Puccini wrote and then lowered the baton saying: “This is the end of the master’s work. After that, he died.”

Despite the cruelty of its plot, Turandot has earned a pre-eminent place in the canon of the universal repertoire and also in the hearts of audiences around the world. With a brilliant and unprecedented score, Puccini portrays the soulless, cold and implacable princess pitted against the man determined to win her at all costs.

The Liceu revives the production that re-opened the theatre after the catastrophic fire of 1994. Created by Núria Espert, the opera is set in the imperial city of Beijing, where Princess Turandot protects her virginity under

Alfano’s ending has become the norm in opera houses all over the world, but it is precisely in this dramaturgical vagueness where Espert puts his seal: an unravelling based on the sublimity and rituals of the Chinese court where Turandot, after recognising that love dominates and weakens her, prefers to kill herself rather than flee abroad. Too many irreparable cracks inside her heart next to a prince with a hero’s thirst who dreams exclaiming “Vincerò” (I will be victorious).

Elena Pankratova

Soprano. She trained as a pianist, choir conductor and music teacher. She made her name in Florence playing the Dyer’s Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten. She has sung in theatres such as the Teatro Real in Madrid, The Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Mariinsky Theatre in Sant Petersburg and the Wiener Staatsoper. She made her debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in the 2019/2020 season with Cavalleria rusticana

Michael Fabiano

Tenor. In 2014, he received the Beverly Sills and Richard Tucker Awards, the first singer to receive both awards in the same year. Recent engagements include his participation in the San Francisco Opera's Opera Ball and Opera in the Park. He made his debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in the 2021/2022 season in the 175th Anniversary Concert and has returned with Tosca (2022/23).

Nadine Sierra

Soprano. In 2017, she won the Richard Tucker Competition and in 2018 the Beverly Sills Artist Award from The Metropolitan Opera of New York. Throughout her career, she has sung in theatres such as the Staatsoper Berlin conducted by Daniel Barenboim, The Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, among others. She will make her debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in the 2020/2021 season with Lucia di Lammermoor.

N Ria Espert

Stage director. Throughout her career, she has worked as an actress, director and cultural manager. She got her start in the world of stage direction in 1986, and since then, in the opera she has directed titles such as Madama Butterfly, Elektra, Rigoletto and Tosca. She made her debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in the 1989/1990 season with Elektra