Sony G90 manual Made for DVD, Original, so they’re not going to fake it for DVD

Made for DVD

. . . . . . . . .

Puccini: Turandot (at the Forbidden City of Beijing). RCA

Victor Red Seal 74321-60917-2.

’m inclined to be kind to the lavish RCA Turandot, and not

Ijust because – as I sample a smorgasbord of available big-

name classical DVDs, in this and a succeeding review – it’s

the only one seriously crafted for the medium. In fact, let’s give

it full credit. It’s the first major-label classical video planned

from the start as a DVD release, which means it’s full of DVD

candy: angles, audio, and subtitles in six languages, plus a

“making of” movie. No surround sound, but that, if you ask me,

means that RCA is being honest. There wasn’t surround sound

in the original, so they’re not going to fake it for DVD.

Still, none of this guarantees a worthwhile product. Some-

body, after all, had to be the first to release a serious classical

DVD, and now that it’s here, the most important question has

to be, “How good is it?” And here, I admit, I was skeptical.

Turandot is one of those operas for huge voices, like Verdi’s

Aïda, that don’t fare well in the current operatic climate.

What we handle easily these days are ensemble operas,

operas that require intelligent, educated singers who con-

tribute small fragments to a mosaic. But we struggle with

works that fail unless the cast (educated, thoughtful or not,

who cares?) floors its collective accelerator, vocally speaking,

and sings with the force of a top-of-the-line Corvette in heat. I

wrote about a cast like that in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino in

the first issue of this restored magazine. But that performance

The first release of a serious classical DVD, and the most important question has to be: “How good is it?”

was filmed in 1957. Now it’s 1999, and the Beijing Turandot

doesn’t even feature the modern world’s most famous opera

stars. God, was I skeptical.

And my first look at the thing only fueled my doubts. I gave

myself a taste of the beginning, letting the opera play for 15

minutes or so. It’s a beautiful, distinctive, unusually artistic pro-

duction (no surprise, considering it’s directed by Zhang Yimou,

China’s leading film director, auteur of The Story of Qiu Ju, To

Live, and Shanghai Triad), but what was clear from the start

was that the most telling artistry comes from the staging, along

with costumes and Chinese dancers, all of which make a com-

pelling, even thoughtful frame for the opera, but don’t deliver

the heart of the performance. The singers

seemed blah; careful, reasonably sonorous,

Zhang Yimou

but not possessed. At times I wouldn’t have sworn that they

even cared much about their work.

The hero of the opera, Calaf, an impetuous wandering

prince (with, ideally, a heroic tenor voice), has just encoun-

tered his blind exiled father, Timur, on a crowded street in the

Forbidden City of Beijing (Turandot, of course, is an Italian set-

ting of a Chinese story, and the shtick of this production is that

it’s staged more or less exactly where the story is supposed to

take place). Timur, blind and helpless, has been rescued and all

but adopted by Liú, one of those old-fashioned opera charac-

ters with a personality profile that can make a modern person

shiver with dismay; she’s a slave girl of unbounded, abject loy-

alty. Upon hearing all this, Calaf, the prince, is seized with grat-

itude, and tells Liú she’s blessed. But on screen, unfortunately,

we see not a real prince, or even a reasonable simulacrum, but

instead a boyish Russian tenor named Sergej (on the DVD box)

or Sergeij (on the DVD itself) Larin, and none of his fairytale

get-up (not even his long black barbarian’s ponytail) could stop

me from noticing that he sang his line with all the enthusiasm

of a man saying, “Yes, thanks for helping my dad, but now I’ve

got to watch the stock market report.”

Taking advantage of DVD technology, I

paged quickly forward to the opera’s most

G R E G S A N D O W