Puccini: Turandot

The icy-hearted princess; the nameless stranger who is prepared to risk everything for love…Puccini's Turandot is a fairytale, a myth, set in an imaginary China that no one (least of all Puccini) has ever pretended is real – and which, with its negative racial stereotyping, is undeniably problematic to modern audiences. In this production created by the great Robert Wilson for the Teatro Real, Madrid, however, everything that is merely decorative is stripped away, creating a world of colour, shadow and light in which the single most powerful force is Puccini's glorious music. And with Irène Theorin as Turandot and Gregory Kunde as Calaf, the singing in this 2018 performance is simply larger than life.