Beautiful, spectacular, intensely colourful, big and brassy and ideally suited to the world’s largest arena for the grandest of opera. Franco Zeffirelli’s 2022 production was first seen at Verona in 2010, and although set and costumes are different, it bears similarities in scale and opulence to the magnificent production that he unveiled at the Met in 1987, where it has been revived many times, most recently last year.
Recordings of those Met performances are still available, so what sets this DVD apart? Firstly, there is a fizzing, intense partnership of the sublime Anna Netrebko and husband Yusif Eyvazov as Turandot and Calaf, her Tartar suitor. The pivotal moment in the opera comes in the final act when the latter kisses Turandot, a passage written by Franco Alfano after the death of Puccini, who left instructions that "their love must... take possession of the whole stage in a great orchestral peroration."
I have never heard that episode performed with such intensity, Eyvazov’s long embrace melting the heart of the ice princess, and her long icicle fingernails too as Netrebko strips them off. The audience applaud and there seems a palpable sigh, as if this were the climax of a schmaltzy film.
That is the other distinctive quality of this production—the fact that it is performed in the open air in a highly responsive environment that generates a feeling of being there among the crowd—and many no doubt will want this DVD as mementos of their visits. For that reason, I have no objection to Eyvazov milking the long final note of "Nessun Dorma", nor, instead of carrying on without a break as the score dictates, to conductor Marco Armilliato halting the music there for the inevitable explosion of applause, nor to the encore that follows. It matters not here that all this slows down the narrative—it is not that sort of production.
Netrebko is imperious, with a defiant stare as Calaf dares to answer the three riddles that would win her hand, then gesturing him inside, as if bidding him enter the freezer. "In questa reggia" is as much the measure of every Turandot as "Nessun Dorma" is for the tenor, and Netrebko is thrillingly good, the low notes booming with as much authority in the enormous stadium as much as the resounding top.
Eyvazov, who sang the part of Calaf at the Met in 2019 and Naples in 2023, has a brilliant, cutting edge to his voice, but seems less comfortable on stage, occasionally seeking reassurance from the podium. Maria Teresa Leva is a wildly infatuated Liu, and the veteran Ferruccio Furlanetto, although not inappropriately sounding his age, is a more than usually forceful Timur in seeking to dissuade his son from his likely suicide mission.