Ponderously Arty Puccini, Riotously Colourful Ravel

Turandot at the Opéra-Bastille, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges at the Palais Garnier

Turandot (Tamara Wilson in this picture) imperiously orders the Prince of Persia’s execution. Left Timur (Mika Kares) and Calaf (Brian Jagde) Picture by Agathe Poupeney

Operatic provision in Paris seems a bounty that aficionados on the UK side of the channel can only contemplate with wonder and envy. The French capital’s Académie Royale de la Musique - the Opéra National de Paris’s original title - goes back to the 17th century, a time when opera in England was barely in its infancy. Then, as now, the Opéra is more lavishly funded than its counterparts in London. Indeed at €95 million it receives more than threefold the annual grant to the Royal Opera House and English National Opera combined.

The Paris company’s two theatres (Palais Garnier and Opéra-Bastille) have over 4,500 seats to sell, and both auditoria are invariably full. The Garnier, of course, is a monument to Second Empire opulence and extravagance, a tourist attraction in its own right. I have attended around 25 performances there since the mid-1970s, yet on every visit I am agog with the magnificence of the decor and join first time visitors exploring the busts of composers, singers and dancers who have contributed to the Opéra’s distinguished history.

Portrayed as zombies: Calaf (Brian Jagde), Liù (Ermonela Jaho) Picture by Agathe Poupeney

My latest visit took in revivals of productions I had missed when new. At the Bastille, Robert Wilson’s minimalist staging of Turandot - with the traditional, abridged Alfano ending - drew me mainly because of the cast. American diva Sondra Radvanovsky had been announced for the title role - only her second attempt ‘live’ after Zurich last summer, following her participation in Antonio Pappano’s Warner Classic recording in 2021. But she didn’t turn up. Was she daunted by the size - and notoriously singer-unfriendly - acoustics of the Bastille? It’s possible, but in any case she was replaced by three singers already seasoned in the part - Irène Theorin, Tamara Wilson and Anna Pirozzi, the Italian soprano who sang the role to acclaim at Covent Garden under Pappano last season. In the performance I attended, Pirozzi was pitted against the Liù of Ermonela Jaho, one of the most spell-binding Puccini sopranos of our day, viscerally acted and exquisitely sung, lavishing a palette of colour on the notes unequalled in our time. Pirozzi’s Turandot confronted her as if taking up a challenge. I don’t think I have heard the title role so delicately shaded with pianissimo phrases, but she had ample volume for the character’s celebrated contest in the Riddle Scene with Brian Jagde’s beefily unyielding Calaf. Merely getting the notes out is a challenge for any Turandot, but Pirozzi sang the role with remarkable finesse as well as power. Jaho’s accounts of both of Liù’s arias were balm to my ears, and it is one of the staging’s few saving graces that the principals are lined up stage-front, as if in a concert performance, so that they don’t have to push their voices.