The Minnesota Opera production of Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot” probably won’t cause you to walk out of St. Paul’s Ordway Center humming the set.
No, you’re likely to have one of opera’s great earworm arias, “Nessun Dorma,” stuck in your head. But it’s a production so full of eye-popping spectacle that the music occasionally slides into eclipse.
From the moment the curtain rises on big bas reliefs of severed heads impaled on poles, blood dripping down, it’s clear that this is a production bent upon capturing attention with its visuals.
The set is bathed in red — its rounded arch looking like a giant version of an intricately carved wood tray — as is the chorus that swarms about the raked ramps.
It’s a beginning that admirably throws you eyes-first into the action.
But if you wonder when it will let up and let you settle into the story and the music — well, it really doesn’t. There are big, elaborate costumes, big swords being brandished, big blotches of blood about the stage.
It all seems a fine fit for an art form built around large-scale voices expressing large-scale emotions.
That’s unless you feel that too much stagecraft can get in the way of opera’s other elements, such as singing, acting and the orchestra’s performance.
In which case, Minnesota Opera’s “Turandot” might not be the production for you. Despite a few standout solos, it feels much more like a visual extravaganza. And, unfortunately, the performers too often seem to be competing with the design for your attention.
Unlike such human-sized Puccini operas as “La Boheme” and “Tosca,” “Turandot” is more of a grim fairy tale.
It centers on a Chinese princess who confounds her various suitors with riddles, then has them beheaded at their first wrong answer. An enamored exiled prince takes up the challenge against the advice of all around him.
Puccini is popular enough that the Minnesota Opera is performing “Turandot” eight times in nine days with pairs of performers alternating in the three lead roles.
Among them, the standout on opening night was Kelly Kaduce as the slave girl, Liu, her pure, sweet soprano soaring through every scene.
Adam Laurence Herskowitz’s robust tenor was an ideal fit for the prince, while Irina Rindzuner’s Turandot packed plenty of power in her voice, if not her stage presence (unaided by an incongruously bland costume).
Richard Ollarsaba and Vern Sutton were impressive as the fathers of the prince and princess, each authoritative and vulnerable in his own way.
But the comic relief provided by Turandot’s three brightly attired courtiers was diminished too often by their voices being buried in the orchestra.
Conductor Michael Christie and the orchestra did fine things with a score that Puccini often took in a more modern direction than was customary for him. And Andre Barbe’s sets are really something to see.
But director Renaud Doucet needed to shepherd more commanding performances from his singers in order to make this not feel like a design-driven show.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at rhubbard@ pioneerpress.com.
What: Minnesota Opera’s production of “Turandot” by Giacomo Puccini
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington St., St. Paul
Tickets: $200-$20, available at 612-333-6669 or mnopera.org
Capsule: It’ll knock your eye out, but your ears may want more.
