'Turandot' Goes to China

After being banned in China, director Zhang Yimou staged the opera at the Teatro Comunale in Florence in 1997 (with Zubin Mehta) and subsequently outdoors at the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1998. This set up the wonderfully curious situation of a Western fantasy set in imperial China being staged in today’s Imperial City, with a Chinese director interested in the fusion of traditional Chinese and Italian opera.

Zhang Yimou said at the time: “Western opera shares a few similarities with traditional Chinese opera, and I have used very stylized techniques from Beijing drama to make Turandot more Chinese.” Fortunately the performances were successful despite the subversive political implications of an opera that begins with a bloodbath, in the capital city of a country that still makes generous use of the death penalty. The opera subsequently has been performed in China many times.

Ironically, China has since adopted Turandot as a kind of "national opera," while it is being slammed in the U.S. and U.K. for offensive stereotypes and "whitewashing." Of course, the opera was never really about China in the first place, but that seems to be lost in the fracas. On the other hand, when the movie version, The Curse of Turandot, a Chinese romantic fantasy film, debuted in China in 2021, it was roasted by Chinese critics and did poorly.