Puccini: Turandot (Complete Opera)
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GIACOMO PUCCINI
Puccini: Turandot (Complete Opera)
Sondra Radvanovsky, Jonas Kaufmann, Ermonela Jaho, Michele Pertusi / Orchestra e Coro dell'Accadmia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano
[ Warner Classics / 2 CD ]
Release Date: Friday 10 March 2023
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This recording of Turandot, Puccini's spectacular final opera marks a number of important firsts. Before the recording sessions in Rome in March 2022, Sir Antonio Pappano had never conducted Turandot; neither Sondra Radvanovsky, who takes soaring title role, nor Jonas Kaufmann as Turandot's suitor, Calaf - who sings 'Nessun dorma' - had previously performed the opera. It is also the first studio recording of Turandot to include the entire, crucial final scene as completed after Puccini's death in 1925 by Franco Alfano. Radvanovsky and Kaufmann are joined by Ermonela Jaho as the slave Liù, Michele Pertusi as King Timur and Michael Spyres - a star tenor in a character role - as the Emperor of China. Pappano conducts the forces of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The success of the entire project was confirmed by a public concert performance, greeted with a standing ovation, that took place a few days after recording had been completed: "Stunningly beautiful," was the view of Opera magazine, "Pappano brings out the dramaturgical sense of every moment of the score …The singing was outstanding." Il Corriere della Sera wrote that "First and foremost, this Turandot will be remembered [for] Antonio Pappano's absolutely inspired achievement … It really felt like discovering a new Turandot."
"…Turandot is infused with a beautiful subtlety, emerging within an opera full of biting irony. Puccini moves between tragedy and lightness, and that's something I really like." - Antonio Pappano
"A Turandot for the ages? This recording holds its own against venerable competition and, in the original Alfano completion, is unique." Gramophone Recording of the Month March 2023
Gramophone Award Finalist 2023 - Opera
"After Jaho, the orchestra and chorus are the best reasons for acquiring this set...Pappano revels in the modernist textures and 'exotic' colouration of Puccini's post-Stravinsky orchestra and brings a sickly quality to the chorus's ruminations on violent death...This Turandot may not outclass the finest classic recordings, but it has Alfano's complete completion, and there is enough interpretative interest from the principals and Pappano to justify adding it to a collection." Opera Disc of the Month April 2023
"The palette of orchestral colour is huge and constantly shifting, Pappano drawing out the music's particular exotic atmosphere." The Guardian
"Kaufmann is an unstoppable and outsize force, bigger even than this opera demands. Once she arrives Radvanovsky is equally gripping, helped by Pappano using the long version of Franco Alfano's completion...However, the first thing to hit the listener is the recording's depth and the orchestra's punch and glow." The Times
"It is the attention Pappano pays to crafting the contrasts between passages of intense sensuality and of mechanistic brutality, casting new light on a familiar score in the process, which really makes this a major recording event." BBC Music Recording of the Month May 2023
Record of the Week Radio 3 - Record Review 18th March 2023
