Word: calaf
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...answer, as it happens, is none of the above. No one, however, has asked for a refund, for Zeffirelli's vision is as vivid as ever. In addition to Soprano Eva Marton as Princess Turandot, Tenor Placido Domingo as Calaf, her suitor, and the other principals, there are 286 singers and supernumeraries. By comparison, Zeffirelli's Boheme at its most gargantuan fielded a cast of merely 280. Much of the Turandot scenery was shipped from Italy in eleven cargo containers, each 40 ft. long. There are 300 costumes, and the headgear alone uses 44 lbs. of pearls, golf balls, chandelier...
...problem comes when the line is crossed between splendor and risibility. The troublesome answers to Turandot's three riddles are contained in pennants attached to the back of her gleaming aqua dress; as Calaf gives the correct ; answers, her minions unfurl the flags. Too tricky by far, and the opening night audience just laughed. Further, the cast spent much of the performance looking down at its collective feet so as not to stumble across the treacherous obstacle course of risers and steps. As a result, Marton, born for the title role, was oddly tentative, the sturdy Domingo seemed distracted...
PUCCINI: Turandot. Eva Marton as Turandot, Jose Carreras as Calaf, Katia Ricciarelli as Liu. Lorin Maazel conducting the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. MGM/UA Home Video, $79.95, stereo. Stage Director Harold Prince's stylishly barbaric 1983 production grimly captured the fairy tale's bloodthirsty, amoral ! quality with striking imagery: the gruesome severed head of the luckless Prince of Persia is held high on a stake, impassive masks hide the faces and emotions of Turandot and her retinue, and the ice princess makes her entrance in Act II down what must be the longest staircase in operatic history...
...title role, veteran Soprano Gwyneth Jones still has a preternaturally loud voice, but her control over it has long since departed, and her wobbly singing is now merely painfully impressive. Tenor Placido Domingo is one of the finest of operatic actors, but even his persuasive characterization of Calaf, the unknown prince who overcomes the ice princess's sexual misanthropy, could not disguise the fact that the part lies uncomfortably high for him. In the pit, Conductor Cohn Davis, leading the opera for the first time, delivered a limp, unidiomatic account of the score that reduced its most thrilling moments...
...There were a lot of jokes where he appeared foolish or lacking strong character," says Rosa Maria Calaf, assistant bureau chief of Spanish national television's New York Bureau. "Those have completely disappeared." The common thinking today is that as prince Juan Carlos could not risk his position as successor to assure his critics. "He was playing a role," says Calaf, adding. "He didn't want to appear as a danger to the [Franco] regime...