A Welcome New Ending

Puccini’s best opera has just gotten better. Saturday night, Los Angeles Opera became the first company to produce “Turandot,” which was left incomplete at the composer’s death, with a new ending by Luciano Berio. Whether the justly maligned banal ending that Toscanini commissioned from Franco Alfano will be retired remains to be seen. But from now on, anyone wanting to mount “Turandot” has a choice.

It almost seems as though Berio, Italy’s greatest composer since Puccini, was born to compose the final duet with which Puccini struggled unsuccessfully for two years. After writing some of his most moving music to underscore the death of the slave girl, Liu, Puccini could not then find a way to melt a barbaric, icy princess’ heart in a final love duet with her suitor, Calaf. When the 65-year-old chain-smoking composer died of throat cancer in 1924, he left behind barely legible sketches for that transformation.

The “Turandot” premiere is famous opera lore. After the last music Puccini wrote, Toscanini laid down his baton. “Here the Maestro put down his pen,” the conductor announced to the audience (or something like that; reports vary) and rushed off stage, tears rolling down his face. But that was also a bit of theatrical hokum. Toscanini already had the Alfano duet in his pocket. He used it at the second performance of the opera, and it has been standard since.

At the time of that premiere, Berio, born to a musical family on the Ligurian coast, was a 6-month-old toddler. Avant-gardist that he has been, Berio did not exactly follow in Puccini’s footsteps, but he is, nonetheless, uniquely qualified to provide the “Turandot” duet. Berio’s layered music is often concerned with the past, with how we must hear old music in context of the new, and how we inevitably hear new music with ears conditioned by our knowledge of history.

That preoccupation with context pervades the 16 minutes of music Berio has provided for “Turandot.” Berio is far more faithful to Puccini’s sketches than was Alfano. Yet Berio cannot but hear these disembodied, far-from-final thoughts of Puccini without trying to imagine all the other music that was floating around in Puccini’s head at the time, especially Wagner, late Mahler and early Schoenberg.

Berio also acknowledges that Puccini wrote himself into a dramatic corner from which there is no solution. Alfano settled for a loud, happy ending, recycling what he could from the earlier parts of the score. Berio fades out in mysterious angst that may not make all singers or audiences happy but that acknowledges the sophistication of Puccini’s score and of modern dramatic needs..

Berio’s new ending was first heard in a concert performance of “Turandot” given by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly in January. Listening to a recording of that performance, I initially had my doubts about Berio’s tactics. It sounded too much like Wagner and Mahler and too little like either Puccini or Berio. But Saturday night, Kent Nagano made it work splendidly in the theater. In his second outing as Los Angeles Opera’s principal conductor, Nagano rethought “Turandot” from the ground up in an illuminating performance that had Puccini’s orchestral score sounding startlingly fresh, as if preparing the way for Berio.

Fresh, firm voices were of further benefit to Puccini and Berio. The most affecting singer of the evening is Hei-Kyung Hong, a lovely Liu and also an unusually vital one. Audrey Stottler brought stunning, firm power to Turandot. Franco Farina was a truly heroic Calaf, his seeming inclination for excess held back by Nagano. Alfredo Daza, Greg Fedderly and Bruce Sledge--the ministers, Ping, Pang and Pong--were full of bright character. Rosendo Flores was the capable Timur, the old blind king and Calaf’s father. Joseph Frank as the Emperor, was amplified to poor effect.

Unfortunately, the new production by Gian-Carlo del Monaco is a mess. He made interesting use of the chorus, moving it as a sea of fluid bodies, but the director did little with the principal characters. Stottler is a large woman, and her exaggerated silent-film gestures did not become her. The absurd staging of the final duet had Turandot suicidally waving a knife.

The gold and lacquer sets by Michael Scott were also a problem. Though not unattractive (except for the kitschy use of Buddhas in this Taoist drama), pillars and a too-high staircase obscured the view for many in the audience. Halfway through her descent down the stars, Turandot was applauded. That was the moment she came into sight for some in the balconies.

Hard, cold, high-contrast lighting hurt the drama as well. Nothing was easy to see. Calaf sings his most famous aria, “Nessun dorma!,” completely in the dark until the end. It is worth remaining for the curtain calls to appreciate how elaborate are the costumes and striking the masks.

Even so, this is an important occasion for Los Angeles Opera and the opera world, in general. Alfano-ized, “Turandot” has sometimes been called the end of the line for Italian opera. Berio’s new ending shows it as a new beginning.

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“Turandot” repeats with the original cast Thursday, June 4, 6, 9, 14 at 7:30 p.m., June 1 and 16 at 2 p.m., and with Nina Warren (Turandot), Ian DeNolfo (Calaf) and Svetla Vassileva (Liu) on June 7 and 11 at 7:30 p.m., $30-$165, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. (213) 365-3500.