Is "Turandot" a verismo opera?

[adriano]

Anna Netrebko's new DGG recital album, entitled "verismo" shows her on its cover in a rather decadent (in my opinion anachronistic) Turnadot costume, as one can guess from its headgear. The rest of the costume is black wings suggesting a death bird. The CD contains two arias from this opera, plus arias from Puccini's "Butterfly", and the ususal box-office pieces by Catalani, Giordano, Boito and Ponchielli.
The "limited super deluxe" edition of this album also contains 3 similarly "decadent" cardboard photos of the artist, plus a 100% silk scarf by Chopard. The Chopard logo of this boxed set appears directly under the yellow DGG logo. This is music for the rich (and decadent) ones. Cannot understand why a consciencious artis like Pappano agreed to such a project... As far as Mrs Netrebko is concerned, we must be prepared for more an more such perversities in the future.
This is music business at its lowest level!
Besides all this bad news, is "Turandot" a verismo piece??

[Alan Howe]

No need to buy the super deluxe version, of course. So the question for me is whether she's any good in this repertoire - which singers with big voices from Tebaldi to Nilsson used to sing. I'd have to hear substantial chunks before considering a purchase.

Turandot's on the outer fringes of verismo, I'd've thought. If Puccini had lived longer it would have been interesting to see how he might have developed.

[Mark Thomas]

The packaging is indeed irredeemably awful. To be pedantic, I believe that the Turandot story comes from Schiller, who in turn took it from a Persian fable. So, in the narrow sense of "verismo" meaning "truth" it clearly doesn't qualify. Musically, though, I think that Puccini wrote in a style which nowadays we'd say at least had its roots in the verismo movement of the late 19th century, wouldn't we? By the early 20th century Italian opera generally had absorbed verismo and it had become the musical norm, even if the libretti to which it was applied are often a very long way from the low-life drama of Cavallaria Rusticana and Pagliacci - witness Andrea Chenier and Adriana Lecouvreur.

[adriano]

"Turandot" is a "Chinese Fairy Tale" by Venetian writer Carlo Gozzi (1720-1826), a contemporary of the great Carlo Goldoni, of which I consider myself a modest kind of "expert". I have a wonderful edition of Gozzi's works in my library (and Goldoni's complete works in 14 volumes of over 1000 pages each, a leather-bound critical edition which is worth quite a fortune today).
Busoni, of course, came back to Gozzi's "Turandot" later. Hans Werner Henze's "Il re cervo" is also based on the play by Gozzi of the same title, and, of course, there is also Prokofiev's "Love of three Oranges". Since I am of Italian mother tongue, I also understand Venetian dialect (I even performed some parts as an actor in earlier times). Gozzi's Commedia dell'Arte masque-figures Pantalone, Truffaldino a.o. are, in Gozzi's play, not speaking dialect, but current Italian, compared to many Goldoni plays in which those parts were written in dialect.
Goldoni wrote 25 opera libretti for composers like Galuppi, Haydn. Wolf-Ferrari however, preferred adapting or using some of Goldoni's authentic theatrical plays.
Gozzis "Turandot" was later adapted for the stage by Schiller, by Bertold Brecht and by Wolfgang Hildesheimer.

[Mark Thomas]

Interesting. Thanks for filling in the very substantial missing link.

[Alan Howe]

I think the point we have made before is that verismo as a musical style is a broader category than verismo in the sense of 'slice of life drama'. Thus, for example, La Boheme or Cavalleria Rusticana sits easily in each category; however, quasi-historical dramas such as Francesca da Rimini or fairy tales such as Turandot retain or expand the basic verismo musical style while no longer aspiring to portray real life situations.

So the answer to Adriano's question is yes - and no.

[adriano]

Tahnks, Alan
I am inclined towards a total "no", but, in any case, it is not a total "yes" 

[Alan Howe]

Genau!

[ncouton]

Turandot? Verismo??? Come on... 

[Gareth Vaughan]

I must admit I had never thought of it as such.

[Alan Howe]

As I suggested, its style, despite the harmonic novelties and orientalisms, is surely still recognisably verismo; indeed its most famous solo, Nessun dorma, is surely the ne plus ultra of verismo tenor arias. Nevertheless, the plot is about as far from true verismo as one can get. So, it's a mixed answer.

[edurban]

All questions of subject aside, I hear the Puccini style as an extension of developments in works of his teacher, Ponchielli.  I listened to 'I Lituani' this weekend (the very fine RAI version) and there and in Gioconda I hear much proto-Puccini. Likewise, in Edgar I hear much undigested Ponchielli.

[Alan Howe]

The wider point would be the forward-looking elements in the Ponchielli-Boito-Faccio group of composers, plus the influences of Gounod, Bizet and Massenet - and Wagner.

[Mark Thomas]

its style, despite the harmonic novelties and orientalisms, is surely still recognisably verismo. [...] Nevertheless, the plot is about as far from true verismo as one can get.

Exactly.

[Alan Howe]

BTW Please don't be tempted by the new Netrebko album (it was reviewed on BBC Radio 3 this morning) - unless you want to hear a soprano singing repertoire that is well beyond her lyric capabilities partnered by her tenor husband with his strangulated tone. Absolutely awful: if it sells, this'll be another triumph of marketing over substance. The verismo empress, despite the cover of the CD, has no clothes...