Turandot Review – Holland Park Opera Celebrates 30 Years with the Great Guignol Puccini | Opera

IIt always boosts morale when a small company can do that. For the past 30 years, Puccini has been a mainstay of Holland Park Opera’s artistic vision, in recent years providing landmark performances of Le Ville and Edgar. Now it’s the turn of Turandot, the only work by the composer to elude them so far, with three concerts in the opera’s centenary year.

Given its call for powerful forces, it’s no surprise that small businesses ignore it. However, Tony Burke’s orchestral reduction proved more than sufficient to convey the sonic grandeur of Puccini’s score. All the requisite exotic rhythms were showcased with just enough brass punch and skill. Only the opening Mandarin xylophone and weak electric organ let things down, which is minor considering the sublime performance of the City of London Sinfonia’s 41 players under Naomi Waugh’s elegant baton. Her flexible interpretation packed the necessary punch while finding delightful details sometimes buried in the full orchestration.

Director Eleanor Burke brings some thoughtful ideas to the table, though the singers are sometimes placed frustratingly far from the audience and the imposed ending, in which a distraught Turandot who has so resolutely rejected Calaf feels forced.

José de Eca leads a strong cast as Calaf, his phrases agile and his Italian accent perfect. The Nessun dorma was simultaneously elegant and sexy, while the optional top C in the puzzle scene found the Portuguese tenor barely breaking a sweat. Welsh soprano Fflur Wyn is a beautifully-toned Liù with a beautiful pianissimo, radiant in the Signore ascolta and poignant in her death scene. Like Turandot, French soprano Anne-Sophie Dubreils had the firepower needed at the top of the voice to ride the orchestra, though she lacked breadth and stability elsewhere.

Joseph Jeongmin Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster, and Zwakele Tshabalala created compellingly engaging and contrasting characters as Ping, Pang, and Bong, bringing out the lyricism of the music as well as its satirical deliciousness. Jihoon Kim is a warmly resonant Taimur. As they showed in this season’s La Fanciulla del West, the Opera Holland Park Chorus is a match for any chorus on the circuit, joined here by the company’s enthusiastic youth chorus.