Marko Marelli’s vision of “Turandot” by Giacomo Puccini

Background. As a notion, an opera theater led by a stage director has a strong presence in modern artistic practice, as it puts forward its own range of cognitive and evaluative tasks that undergo criticism. The fi rst task is related to compliance of the proposed rendition with the composer’s concept and music drama of a particular opera music piece. The second one is related to the director’s vision and understanding the peculiarities, which allows us to form an opinion about the comprehension degree of an author’s idea and the individuality of its implementation. The relevance of the designated semantic constants is reinforced by the variety of opera classics incarnation on famous opera stages. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to study and analyze the scenographic techniques that allow M. Marelli with his bright talent as a director to embody the opera plot and uncover incentive-psychological motifs that defi ne the deep content layer of G. Puccini’s “Turandot” opera. Methods. The study is based on a comparative method of analysis, with the help of which the validity of M. Marelli’s directorial concept by the dramatic concept and the semantic lines peculiarities of G. Puccini’s opera is revealed. Results. The stage performance of “Turandot” by G. Puccini on the famous opera stage of the Lake Constance was timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Bregenz festival. For the implementation of this project, the Swiss stage director and designer Marco Arturo Marelli was invited for the fi rst time to organize it. The specifi c features of the huge stage forced all the natural conditions to be considered: wind, water, its level, and the weight of the theatrical scenery elements. Therefore, before creating the intended environment, M. Marelli built several preliminary models in search of the only solution that would combine the oriental fl avor and plot intrigue, hidden psychologism and bare emotions, intimacy and pompous mass scenes. The dramatic composition of the scenario, created by M. Marelli, makes it possible to tell how deep his comprehension of Puccini’s music is, as we observe its semantic components and the interaction of contrasting fi gurative lines, author’s remarks in the score, personal circumstances in the composer’s life, his letters, the conditions for creating an opera and a long search of ways to cut the knot of plot contradictions in the Finale part. The techniques he used reveal his artistic and aesthetic principles. This allowed him to create an organic fusion of intense musical and dramatic action, defused by ensemble, choral and dance scenes, visual effects that decode psychological subtext, and the theatrical scenery itself, which specifi es the exact place of events, complements the missing verbal commentary, allowing the stage area to look massive and versatile. As a result, the ideological concept of M. Marelli appears in the interdependence of the internal and external planes; their content is determined by his understanding and vision of the opera “here and now”, that is, as a single musical and theatrical piece. The internal plane is directly connected with the events of the fairy-tale plot, interpreted by the stage director’s individual consciousness. The external one forms the design of the performance through the variety of static and mobile forms, transformed according to the sequence of light effects, and the silent video by A. Kitzig, which gives a slight expressionistic taste. M. Marelli’s intellectual and emotional immersion in the “history” of the opera contributed to the formation of a symbolic by-plot through two fi gures: Puccini and Calaf (a character of the opera). It is played on a small platform at the bottom of the main stage, depicting the “blue room” (O. Schmitt), where you can see the instrument with the scores on the music stand, a table with a jewel-box on it, an armchair, and a bed. The man that appears clearly personifi es the composer, who “looks for” music ideas. As the events are unfolding, Calaf appears in the “room”; he is tormented by the desire to melt the cold heart of Turandot and feverishly looking for a way out of this situation. The novelty of interpreting a well-known fairy-tale plot lies in a fundamentally different motivation for the behavior of Turandot. She identifi es herself with Lou-Ling, who was tortured and murdered by a man long ago, so Turandot is driven by a thirst for revenge. The story about the cry of the miserable princess Turandot, which she constantly hears inside of her, looks differently as if she becomes one with her distant ancestor. By the end of the story, she appears as in a cocoon shell, unattainable and invincible. This is followed by a scene of puzzles that move events to a turning point in the plot twists and turns and mark a kind of a going-back fl ow of time. The director increases of effect of the symbolic line in the performance by adding the silent video by A. Kitzig. The parallel dynamics of the stage action and the metamorphosis of the masks visualizes the psychological component of Puccini’s opera. The whole set of plot and scenery means exists only with the purpose of revealing this psychological component. As a result, the scene of the test Calaf must pass acquires a different dimension, delineating the fate twists of both heroes. Again and again, the pieces of clothes fall down from Turandot like scales of a snake. This is accompanied by the transformation of the previously unfi red face of the mask, which ultimately cracks like a clay cast and fi nally collapses. The heroine remains in a thin silky dress shirt and tries to cover her bare shoulders with her hands. Her nakedness is akin to defenselessness, the loss of solid ground under your feet. This way, M. Marelli resolved not only the problem of the impossibility to show a psychological degeneration of personality on the huge stage by traditional acting techniques, but also contradictions of plot twists that haunted the composer. Conclusions. The experience of the Bregenz version shows that an important role played by the conditions of the stage space, which was used by a talented stage director and designer as a component of the multi-level system, where everything goes with accordance to the hierarchical subordination of the play. This seems to be the masterful combination of M. Marelli’s personal artistic and aesthetic philosophy, the features of the last opera by J. Puccini and all theatrical resources of a unique theatrical scene of the Lake Constance.