Archivarius - Saggi a cura di/Essays by Luca Logi (llogi@dada.it)
From Florence to Beijing
(Travelling with Turandot)
By Luca Logi
When I boarded the Alitalia 747 from Pisa to Beijing on August 26th, 1998, I was expecting a long but quite routinely work. I am a member of the supporting staff of Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (the Florence May Festival and opera house orchestra). The staff is composed by four persons: Andrea Frullini, orchestra manager (in charge of organizing the orchestra players); the two orchestra techs (Antonio Carrara and Luca Mannucci), in charge of taking care of music instruments; and your faithful writer, librarian, in charge of tmusic scores and materials.
We did consider thisTurandot a routine work: my work was quite easy as we already performed the opera in 1997 with Zubin Mehta conducting the very same orchestra people; for Andrea, Antonio and Luca this was a relatively simple tour, as performances were scheduled in only three venues (the Forbidden City for Turandot, and three performances of Verdi's Messa da Requiem at Century Theatre and People's Congress House). On the contrary, we consider a tour as being really difficult when we have to set up the stage every day in a different venue - this being a little like packing and moving from home: when we are touring our Orchestra packs about 80 flight cases of music intruments.
Other colleagues at Maggio Musicale had a much more difficult time: I'm thinking about light techs, that had to work several night shifts (from 8 pm to 6 am), or the production manager which was charged with coordinating the whole machine. Some of these colleagues of ours, as well as the choir members and repetiteurs, which had to reharse on stage, leaved Italy well before us. Some of the techs first did set up the Beijing Turandot and then moved to Shangai, where the new opera house was opened at about the same time with a reprise of our Aida production of 1996.
Several organization worked together in the Beijing Turandot; the main three were O.O.S. - Opera on Original Site Inc., a Vienna-based organization set up for this production, as the main producer; Maggio Musicale Fiorentino as being in charge of the artistic side; CPAA (China Performing Arts Agency) as being in charge of the local Chinese organization. The PRC Culture Ministery was also involved, while audio and video production were entrusted to the German BMG group.
We already performed a Zhang-Yimou-directed Turandot in Florence, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 1997; this being a very different (indoor) production from the Beijing 1998 one. In Florence Zhang Yimou had to fill a limited space (an ordinary opera stage) and followed different directing ideas. The theatrical Turandot was a visual feast in colours, with a powerful red chromatic shift towering on the spectator. Choral and ballet ensembles were extensively moving across the stage. (BTW, the production will be performed again in Florence on next September).
On the contrary, in Beijing Zhang Yimou had to fill an immense space used as a stage set: the enormous place in front of the Palace of Celestial Purity (included in the Forbidden City). Zhang Yimou chose to have the operatic action (as described in the libretto) almost entirely performed in a restricted space on the front, while keeping the choral mass standing still on the marble stairs in front of the stage; the remaining place in front of the palace was filled by moving hundreds of extras, who had to reharse more than one month under militar discipline in order to get to perfect sinchronism. When I am saying 'militar discipline', I exactly mean it: male extras were soldiers from the Police Department (and they were quite happy to be there performing instead of being moved to the recently flooded zones to work in the relief forces). Female extras were very young pupils from Beijing Dance Academy (and their discipline was no less than militar, too).
The principal obstacle to the regular working of the whole machine was the weather. Beijing does not enjoy a favorable climate - in August humidity is high and sun unrelenting. We were expecting almost no rain; on the contrary it rained on most of reharsals, and also one of the performances had to be suspended without getting to the end (it began to rain lightly just few minutes before the end of the second act, and Zubin Mehta had to conduct everything more and more faster in order to get to the last chord before the big rain downpuring).
Beijing is a large city; better said, Chinese have a different sense of proportions. The main roads are extremely wide (eight and more lanes), and follow North-South and East-West lines (out of respect for old Feng Shui teachings); these main roads still have the name of ancient gates and ancient walls, no more present. Enclosed between the main roads there are narrow alleys (hutong); some of them still have a look coming from the past, and are very much like they were in imperial times. There is a huge contrast between the new Beijing (shopping malls, sandwich eateries, western shops) and the old Beijing (hutongs, markets).
Our group was hit by a serious accident. A night, just after the stage reharsal, a chorus lady was having a drink in a pub with her colleagues when she fainted. Medical aid was summoned as soon as possible, but she died after a pulmunar oedema in a short time. Our company's doctors found her already dead when they arrived on the place.
Daryl Green (she was British, but whe was an Italian resident since a lot of years) was one of the most beloved members of the Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino for her kindness and her competence. The reharsal room of the choir is now named after her memory.
On the Turandot stage three complete companies of singers did alternate between consecutive performances; the second company (Casolla -Larin - Frittoli - Colombara) is featured in audio and video recordings. There were nine performances (one of them, as I wrote, was left incomplete for the bad weather). The public was very much non-Chinese (most of them were Americans and Germans); we also found in Beijing a Florentine Maggio Musicale subscriber who always tries to follow us in our tourneés.
We come back to Florence (tragically, with one person less) on Sep. 14th. I will not bore you writing about the last night, which we spent packing everything. As a farewell after the last performance, Chinese performers did some strange fireworks - long paper strips powered by small crackers. All the paper strips did form a large knot around everything in the orchestra pit; we spent a long time getting rid of them. We had some worries in packing the musical instruments are there were few lights and we were not able to keep track of the cases. We ended after 2 PM, and getting out of the Forbidden City we found an irreal Tien An Men square: a light but hot and humid fog, and scores of policemen - the Chinese government does not like any public unauthorized display on Tien An Men, and has it heavily policed day and night (more by night than by day). We felt very unreal; we were four Italians among hundreds of Chinese policemen, but we felt like being a mob. We walked to our hotel (not a short stretch). The following day we had ten hours and half flying time: the desert Mongolia, the immense Siberia (half of the flying time), Ural mountains. When we were flying over Krakow, Poland, we began feeling at home.
Aggiornata al 8 marzo 99 - Last adjourned Mar. 8th, 1999 - (C) Luca Logi 1999