It is hard indeed to know what to expect of the Bulgarian production of Puccini's opera Turandot, due to play in Taipei and Kaohsiung over the next two weeks.
First there is the question of Eastern European opera companies. Some of them are starved of cash and forced to offer 30-year old productions sung by soloists who themselves are also a little past their sell-by dates. But others, such as the State Opera Poland who visited Taipei in 2002, and inexplicably attracted such tiny audiences, were outstanding, certainly in their two leading soloists. You never, in other words, know quite what you're going to get.
Then there's the opera itself. It's both a great classic and potential landmine. After enormous success in his early years, Puccini lapsed into silence and near-failure in middle-age, suddenly coming up, however, with this extraordinary work as he lay dying. He never finished it, but it was completed by a colleague and many listeners believe it's his masterpiece.
It tells a tale of a sexually frigid Chinese princess who decapitates all suitors who fail to answer her three riddles. But herein lies the problem. Bringing European Chinoiserie dating from 1926 to a real Chinese society 80 years on — the whole project bristles with difficulties and occasions for the acutest embarrassment.
Reading about the Sofia National Opera isn't an experience that decides you one way or the other. This production, for instance, has recently been seen in the Johnson County Community College, Kansas, at the Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and courtesy of the Concert Association of Wilmington (population 60,000) in Delaware. That it's showing in Taipei at the less than state-of-the-art Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall theater isn't ultimately encouraging either.
But then you never know. A country that produced a soprano like Anna Tomowa-Sintow can't by any means be written off. Opera needs scenery, however drab, and costumes, however dowdy, if its curious magic is to stand a chance of coming off. With the NSO Ring set to be largely in a concert version (though with the supremely magnificent and not-to-be-missed Linda Watson in the leading female role), opera buffs eager for the whiff of peeling sets and threadbare wigs may just be in for a bonanza with this possibly Ruritanian, but equally possibly enthralling, Turandot.
It's four years since any agent brought a fully-staged foreign opera production to Taiwan. Previously the practice was rather common, but then with the economic down-turn they all got cold feet. This time there will be 150 people involved — instrumentalists, chorus-members, stage-hands and soloists — with the scenery arriving in separate consignments on two cargo ships. This, then, is hardly imported opera on the cheap. However much the show may lack celebrity international names, it will in some sense be the real thing. It's only coming to Taiwan, incidentally, and as a cultural exchange is likely to have a rather particular Taiwanese flavor.
The production is double-cast — two sets of soloists will alternate in the main roles. On Sept. 20, Sept. 22, Sept. 23 and Sept. 24 at 7.30pm in Taipei, and on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30 at 7.30pm in Kaohsiung it will be as follows: Turandot — Bayasgalan Dashnyam; Timur — Svetozar Rangelov; Calaf — Kostadin Andreev; Liu — Sofia Ivanova. On Sept. 21 at 7.30pm and on Sept. 23 and Sept. 24 at 2.30pm in Taipei, and on Sept. 28 at 7.30pm and Sept. 30 at 2.30pm in Kaohsiung it will be as follows: Turandot — Elena Baramova; Timur — Dimitar Stantchev; Calaf — Kamen Chanev; Liu — Tsvetana Bandalovska.
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