The audience then can also focus on the music and singing. The focus and sound panorama that emerges can enhance the musical experience. The singers sing in character and the story gets told, but they have more freedom to focus on singing, without also having to worry about costume changes, placement on stage, and choreography. MDLO performs operas in concert with a large orchestra and chorus, on stage with the singers the music is not emerging from a pit which often constrains the number of musicians that can be accommodated. Someone once jokingly told me that concert opera was crack cocaine for opera enthusiasts I concur and am a huge fan.
At Sunday afternoon’s performance in the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, I felt doubly rewarded. This production, marked by outstanding orchestral and choral performances, also introduced an exciting young soprano to the DC area. In this impressive return to the stage for the first time in two pandemic-restricted years, MDLO made a compelling case that theirs is still an opera company to be reckoned with. Nonetheless, whether performed in concert as done by Maryland Lyric Opera this past weekend or as a fully staged Met Opera Zeffirelli spectacle, it is compelling opera with great music by a great composer. The fairy tale plot for Turandot is problematic in several ways and best viewed as though the story was introduced with the statement “In a place and time long ago that never existed”. The score for the last scene was unfinished at Puccini’s death and was completed by composer Franco Alfani. Composer Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot (1926), based on an eponymous play by Carlo Gozzi, features librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.
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