This great production, the conception and the direction are in charge of one of the most respected Brazilian stage directors, André Heller-Lopes. The performances will be from November 16th to 25th.

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Teatro Municipal of São Paulo closes the lyrical season of 2018 with the opera Turandot, by Giacomo Puccini, one of the most famous and monumental works of the Italian repertoire.

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On stage, there will be more than 170 artists. The Municipal Symphony Orchestra of São Paulo is presented under the direction of maestro Roberto Minczuk, who also signs the musical direction of the show. The Lyrical Choir will have the regency of Mário Zaccaro and the Paulistano Choir of Master Naomi Munakata.

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“This year, the Municipal had a season of operas that valued titles almost unknown to the general public and others more popular even for those who do not often frequent opera houses, as the case of La Traviata, which has famous arias that have already served until of film soundtrack. “Now, with Turandot, we hope to have a similar reaction from the audience, since she has one of the most famous arias in the world operatic repertoire, Nessun dorma“, highlights the Municipal Secretary of Culture, André Sturm.

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” I see two people deeply marked by their past: a prince who lost everything and has no more joy to live and who only smiled again when he saw his beloved. And Turandot, a woman created as a princess divided between her desire for revenge and her fear of love. It is a duel of forces that unleashed a great passion between the two characters, “explains Heller-Lopes.

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The director André Heller-Lopes cites as one of his inspirations for the elaboration of the concept of the show a letter from the composer Puccini to the librettist Renato Simoni, in 1920, informing that he would like to make a Turandot “for the modern mind.” “It is in this post-Freudian context that I visualize three worlds, three layers, which are key to understanding history: that of fantasy associated with the past and trauma. of the ancestral death, and represented by the millenary tradition of the Peking Opera, and by the Chinese fable and empire; the contemporary, in which very current topics such as violence against women and minorities in general are discussed, represented by the public that testifies to the representation and, finally, by the frame of that show, in a limit between reality and fiction, “reveals Heller-Lopes.

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For mounting Heller-Lopes, the musical director and ruler of the Municipal Symphony Orchestra of São Paulo, Roberto Minczuk, decideduse the traditional end of Franco Alfano. “for me is a perfect, triumphant finale. The opera ends up. It is one of the characteristics bacanas, which differs from the tragic ends of the other operas of Puccini, as Tosca and La Bohème. In Turandot you cry with joy with the force of the show. This is the impact that the opera has, “he says.

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The three-act play is set in China, at the time of the fables, and recreated under the gaze of the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte.The plot, with modern touches, speaks of a princess who avoids getting married, imposing all her suitors to solve three puzzles at the risk of losing their lives: whoever does not manage to solve them will be beheaded – at the beginning of the opera, almost 30 princes have already died trying to win … Turandot is revenging her ancestor Lou- Ling, who was raped and murdered by a foreign prince. Calaf, a foreign prince, is enchanted by the beauty of Turandot and accepts the challenge. The opera brings one of the sweetest heroines of Puccini, the slave Liù, secretly in love with Calaf, She sacrifices herself for love, without revealing the name of her beloved.

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Turandot is the unfinished opera by Giacomo Puccini that debuted at the Teatro alla Scala, in Milan, in 1926. As Puccini died before finishing the work, l The Italian composer and pianist Franco Alfano played the task of finalizing it. In the 2000s, the Italian composer Luciano Berio wrote a new ending for the production.

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SOLOISTS
As Turandot, Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs, a great American dramatic soprano, makes her debut in São Paulo after praised performances in other Latin American countries, taking turns with Annemarie Kremer, who returns to the Municipal: the singer was Salomé in the homonymous production of 2014.

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The Canadian tenor David Pomeroy makes his debut in South America in the performance of Calaf, a role he divides with the great Brazilian tenor Eric Herrero.

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In the role of Liú, the paulista singers, alternate Gabriella Pace, a European-based soprano celebrating 20 years of her Municipal debut, and Marly Montoni, who is in her third opera production at the house.

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Timur will be interpreted by the consecrated Brazilian basses Luiz-Ottavio Faria and Carlos Eduardo Marcos.
The three ministers of the Turandot court, Ping, Pang and Pong, responsible for the humorous scenes, will be sung respectively by the baritone Vinícius Atique and the tenors Geilson Santos and Giovanni Tristacci. Santos also performs on stage as the Prince of Persia and Tristacci as the Emperor.

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SCENARIO
The scenario developed for the opera Turandot creates a space for several narrative plans to occur. A vertical horseshoe-shaped stalls mounted on the stage create elevated platforms, where the “Beijing Public” will be represented, represented by 85 of the runners, and who testify to all the action. In the center, an arena where a trupe, the “Peking Opera”, with soloists, 45 choirs and more than 10 actors, makes the staging of the fable. The singers become actors characters to stage the plot in a theater mounted on the stage of the Municipal Theater of São Paulo.

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“When reconstructing the architecture or even objects icons of a culture as marked as China, there is a great opportunity to create only a pastiche that brings the dubious memory of a civilization.I prefer to have those elements as a memory and use them as texture for light , creating climates and dimensions that seem closer to the lyrical dimension that music brings us, “says the set designer Renato Theobaldo.

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Renato Theobaldo is an active participant in the Brazilian operatic universe, having conceived more than 34 operas in the last 20 years; , to be held in the city of São Paulo, within the framework of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change.

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CLOTHING
The costumes are all signed by Sofia Di Nunzio who, as an operas stylist, has already made projects for the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Teatro Solís Montevideo, and for Municipal of Santiago, in Rio de Janeiro and in São Paulo .
For Turandot, the stylist developed two cuts of figurines: the one of the runners (public of Beijing), inspired by the aesthetics of the 1960s with influence of the Asian culture, and the costumes of the soloists (Peking Opera) that bring many Chinese traditional colors, prints, masks and makeup with elements of martial arts and the Chinese Empire.

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Buy your tickets here.