UDC: 792.54.091 COBISS.SR-ID 139203593 CIP - 6 _________________
Received: Nov 26, 2023
Reviewed: Oct 03, 2023
Accepted: Oct 08, 2023
Turandot: The Half-Blood Princess
Citation: Hu, Tianrui. 2024. "Turandot: The Half-Blood Princess." Accelerando: Belgrade Journal of Music and Dance 9:2
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Abstract
Turandot has long been criticized as artificial, anti-feminist, and most notoriously, Orientalist. The goal of this paper is to show from a survey of its numerous adaptations and transformations worldwide, that it has been proven more productive to treat it as a case for the complexity of the discussion on authenticity of a piece of art in an ever-changing and global world, instead of simply dismissing it as an attestation of Puccini’s inability to produce an authentic montage of a place no different than “a galaxy far, far away” for a Nineteenth century Italian. The paper concludes that over the course of the last two decades, Turandot has transformed from a piece used by the West to appropriate Chinese, to a self-appropriating piece that helped mainly China to assert its “cultural soft power,” and eventually to a vehicle for Chinese domestic audience to understand more about both themselves and the West, and the common thread uniting both cultures: humanity and love.
Keywords: Puccini opera, Orientalism, Coloniality, Culture, Performance, Western productions, Chinese productions |
Introduction
Turandot encompasses all quintessential themes of a Puccini opera: love, cruelty and death, against an exotic backdrop. From its setting, costumes, to the famed Molihua (Jasmine Flower) melody, Turandot’s inextricable link to Orientalism has caused stirs in both Puccini’s continent and its faraway proposed homeland. It has long been one of the most popular operas in the Western world since its conception. Since the 1960s, numerous Chinese directors have also attempted to bring the princess of China back to its home country. In the words of famed director Zhang Yimou, Turandot is a “contrived story of China fabricated by a Western artist” (Wang 2013, 172). Yet, Zhang’s statement did not stop him from staging one of the most commercially successful productions of Turandot on the Forbidden Palace site in Beijing in 1998. Numerous other adaptations, such as a Sichuan opera version, a Beijing opera version, and even one with a modern setting, have since met audiences domestic and abroad to mostly positive reviews in China. Despite Turandot’s reputation in the Western world as an Orientalist opera, its adaptation and evolution in China has made it a microcosm of China’s changing classical music culture in the last century, prompting constantly renewed discussions on the meaning of authenticity.
Artistic view of Turandot and the problem of authenticity:
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References
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Belgrade Center for Music and Dance is the publisher of Accelerando: BJMD
Belgrade Center for Music and Dance is the publisher of Accelerando: BJMD