This Was an Opera Unto Itself

When Zubin Mehta decided in 1997 to mount a new production of “Turandot,” the Puccini opera set in Beijing’s Forbidden City, he knew exactly what he didn’t want.

“Usually, ‘Turandot’ is full of cliches; it looks like a big Chinese restaurant,” the conductor explains. “I wanted a China the outside world had never seen before. I said, ‘Why not a Chinese director?’ I didn’t know his name, but I said ‘Why don’t we get the “Raise the Red Lantern” guy?”’

As followers of international film know, “the ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ guy” is Zhang Yimou, one of China’s very best and most controversial filmmakers. His involvement as director was a stroke of genius for Mehta’s production, and a stroke of luck for “The Turandot Project,” Allen Miller’s fascinating documentary on the ins and outs of this most unusual operatic collaboration.

Though Miller is a veteran of this form, having directed 35 nonfiction musical films including the Oscar-winning “From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China” and the documentary short that was the inspiration for the Meryl Streep-starring “Music of the Heart,” what he has done with “The Turandot Project” is not what you might expect.

For one thing, though there is a considerable amount of music here, it’s not the film’s major thrust. This is partly because there was so much else to focus on, and partly because the demands of this production mandated three separate sets of singers, which dilutes the interest in specific voices. It’s an hour into the film, for instance, before the tenors who sing the opera’s most famous aria, “Nessun Dorma,” are introduced.

“The Turandot Project” is more concerned, and with good reason, with the opera’s extravagant visual look. The gorgeous pageantry of sets and costumes is frankly dazzling; as Mehta says, “In Asia, festivity means color. You’ve never seen a gray dragon.” And you won’t see one here.

The film focuses most, however, on the unexpected areas of dramatic interest and conflict that opened up when the production, initially scheduled only for Florence, was given official permission to be remounted in Beijing.

Because of the nature of the government and the size of its bureaucracy, everything in official China is difficult. Negotiations for the project took months, and even location scouting in the production’s ultimate site, a structure in the Forbidden City, had to be conducted in secret. And because the building in question is a national treasure, one of the officials involved matter-of-factly admits, “In case something happens, I will be put in jail.”

Taking the production to China also thrust Zhang, more or less a trainee in Florence, right in the center of things. And because he was open to having Miller’s cameras follow him almost everywhere, we get an excellent glimpse of this exceptional director at work. Though opera and cinema are different in many ways, “The Turandot Project” still conveys a strong sense of what Zhang must be like behind the camera.

While for the Florence production, the director had gone with Peking opera-influenced costumes spanning several eras of Chinese history, he felt this would not do for the Forbidden City. Since the opera would be staged in front of a Ming Dynasty building, everyone would have to be wearing the appropriate Ming Dynasty costumes.

This was a lot easier to say than to do. Nine hundred costumes had to be made, occupying 100 rural extended families (something like 2,000 people) for four months. The cost: $600,000, which is one of the reasons the final bill for this “Turandot” crept up to $12 million to $15 million. There’s a lot you can accomplish if cost is no object.

Because of the large courtyard space between the stage and the audience, Zhang decided to make use of 300 soldiers from the Chinese army, all of whom were costumed and warned not to flirt with the ballet dancers. Western opera was new to them (“like a cow’s moaning” was one description), but they warmed to the situation.

Though he seems to have gotten along splendidly with Mehta despite the lack of a language in common, Zhang had his share of conflicts, many of them shown on-screen. The most vivid was with Italian lighting designer Guido Levi, who objected to the unnuanced brightness that Zhang championed as more in keeping with Chinese tradition. One of “Project’s” best scenes has these two standing next to each other, communicating through an interpreter but in truth not communicating at all.

Through it all, Zhang comes across as low-key but very sure of himself, as principled as he is determined. Again and again, in pep talks he gave to stagehands and in general conversation, he emphasizes that he had taken the project on “to show Chinese traditional culture to the world, to win credit for the Chinese people.” To see this passion playing out, to experience how much this production did mean to China, allows “The Turandot Project” to attain levels of emotion that complement those of Puccini ‘s classic.

Unrated. Times guidelines: suitable for all audiences.

‘The Turandot Project’

An Alternate Current, the Four Oaks Foundation and EuroArts Entertainment production, released by Zeitgeist Films. Director Allan Miller. Producer Magaret Smilow. Executive producers Walter Scheuer, Margaret Smilow. Cinematographer Tom Hurwitz. Editors Allan Miller, Donald Klocek. Sound Peter Miller. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes.

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