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Tempo Data from Broadcast Performances of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, 1961 – 2009

Neumann, Joshua1

Published Sep 18, 2020 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.nk98sf7r3

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Sep 18, 2020 version files 6.35 MB

Abstract

The works of well-known composers active as recording technology developed and as the recording industry emerged thus make ideal case studies. Giacomo Puccini is uniquely suited to a study of tradition through technological means: he has perhaps the best-documented relationship to advances in technology and the resulting shift in entertainment aesthetics of any composer of this era. Of his twelve operas, Turandot is the only major work whose premiere post-dates the advent of electronically captured and controlled sound recording, and thus position at the crossroads of technical practices and social aesthetics stemming from technological conditions in multimedia entertainment in the 1920s.

Of the major opera houses in the world, New York’s Metropolitan Opera has perhaps the most comprehensively documented performance history. The launch of “The Metropolitan Opera Archives” online with open access in 2005 made it the most accessible source of information for operatic performing history in any opera house in the world. By making this information publicly and readily available, the Met made significant strides in democratizing opera in a way similar to what recordings had done nearly a century earlier. With this new tool, fans now had the ability to deepen their learning and, because of this, their enjoyment of opera at the Met. Thus, by extending the social activity of learning about opera audiences to the digital (and therefore widely accessible) realm, the Met sought to thrust itself into the forefront of the operatic social sphere in addition to its broadcast offerings. Many recordings of these transmissions are available online through The Metropolitan Opera On Demand, while the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound at the New York Public Library serves as the official repository for hard and digital copy recordings of the broadcasts.

Within this opera, six moments are most appropriate for examination for both practical and dramaturgical reasons. Arias in Puccini’s operas offer dramatic pauses for characters; they are moments of emotional exposition, or the result of reflecting on surrounding events. Both of these types of arias occur in Turandot. Liù’s first aria, “Signore, ascolta!”, exhibits both functions, as she reacts emotionally to Calaf’s stated intent to answer Turandot’s riddles. Calaf’s response, “Non piangere, Liù,” gives him the opportunity to respond tenderly to Liù, and show concern for his father, Timur, by requesting she remain if the prince surrenders his life. Turandot’s entrance aria (in Act II), “In questa reggia,” recounts the reasons for her riddles and brutality – her desire for vengeance on behalf of her ancestress Lou-o-Ling. “Nessun dorma!” is Calaf’s reflection on Turandot’s commandment that no one in the realm shall sleep until she knows his name and shows his resolve in conquering the princess. Liù’s suicide aria, “Tu che di gel sei cinta,” reveals both her crumbling determination under the duress of torture and her desire for Calaf to win the hand of Turandot. In addition to these arias, one other moment of musical practicality and dramaturgical significance merit consideration for its performance traditions: the dramatic climax of acts II. In Act II’s "Riddle scene," where Turandot poses each of her three riddles and Calaf successfully answers them, fermatas precede the statement of each riddle and Calaf’s response to the first and third. The time performers devote to observing these fermatas in relationship to the surrounding musical fabric can indicate varying degrees of gravity, levity, or expediency as the opera’s second dramatic conflict emerges from the resolution of its first.