Eastern soloists go west...

PRODUCER Ellen Kent recently announced she was giving up touring her imported East European opera companies and doing a few large-scale amphitheatre productions instead.

But it will be a while before we have seen the last of her many toured repeats of popular works.

These productions of Puccini’s final opera, plus Aida (tonight and Saturday) and Carmen (at other venues) are visiting over 50 theatres up to the summer — with productions of “Madame Butterfly” and “La Traviata” to follow this autumn.

Whether the latter will be new “amphitheatre” productions — new shows produced and directed by Kent — or the Moldovan and Ukrainian imports, we don’t know, not that the differences will be great.

The company has curious ideas about what is important. Much has been made of the “amphitheatre” set, which is merely a new generic backdrop for each production.

A solid-looking structure of two-storey columns and arches, it is based on Roman architecture, tweaked as appropriate with Chinese or Egyptian atifacts.

So this ‘big feature’ boils down to her using a common set that doesn’t stylistically fit any of these productions terribly well. And anyway, no one goes to opera because of the set.

What hasn’t had nearly as much attention as the better-than-usual costumes or the chorus of cute children or the dancing girls, is the singing and playing, which is a bit more important.

This Turandot again relies on largely East European soloists, but not the very best ones.

Our Calaf is thus a fairly unsubtle, English-dwelling Georgian tenor, Irakli Grigali, with admittedly thrilling top notes but little acting ability; while young Galina Bernaz might be very good as the icy princess Turandot one day, but is currently incapable of handling its more arduous demands, especially in her big act two aria.

Both are beaten for quality by Korean singer Elena Dee as Liu — but she has the most sympathetic role anyway. The chorus work is rather good though — as is the orchestra, about 80 per cent of the time.

Kent directs, and misjudges the opening act rather badly, with an execution that comes over more like a boy scout jamboree.

There is inappropriate humour elsewhere too: the one Puccini opera that demands gravitas and power instead gets nothing but gimmicks and poor attention to detail.