Conductor: Paolo Carignani
Turandot: Nina Stemme
Liu: Anita Hartig
Calaf: Marco Berti
Timur: Alexander Tsymbalyuk
In my life so far, there has been only a few things in my bucket list. I was totally indifferent anything but myself, so naturally, there has been nothing particularly interesting. Fortunately, I could come here, New York and NYU, and it opened my perspective vastly. That was the moment when I started longing for Turandot. Last summer, I watched Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, which borrowed its leitmotif from Turandot. The two leading characters' interchanging relationship represented both romantic and incompatible aspects of secret agents. Finally, I could see this opera today, as my self-birthday-gift, at Lincoln Center Opera House.
Calaf is an exiled prince who unexpectedly meets his father Timur, a superseded king, in ancient China. Timur lost his vision from a battle but could survive thanks to a female servant, Liu. China is ruled by a merciless princess Turandot, who beheads every suitor. Initially, Calaf deplores such tyranny, but as soon as he sees the princess' beauty, he becomes enthralled. After solving Turandot's three mysterious riddles, he declares that if she can tell his name until next morning, she will not be obliged to marry him. On the verge of his victory, he nervously waits the morning to come. However, the princess torments his father and Liu to know his name. For her master's happiness, Liu sacrifices her life by herself and this action makes the princess realize what true love is. Finally, she accepts Calaf's love and happily marries him.
I once watched this opera on Met VOD (Metropolitan Opera Video On Demand), but seeing directly was obviously different from seeing in a small computer screen. Set design highly emphasized height and depth of the stage, so that it made the princess and the emperor seem inaccessible and sublime. Especially, when the golden palace was revealed in "Gravi, enromi ed imponenti", astounded audiences applauded though that score was not finished. I was one of them. The stage setting was undoubtedly artificial. However, I could not help but be fascinated by the magnificence that the opera propagated. Such actuality was something that I could not acquire in a film theater.
Also, Anita Hartig, who played Liu, presented authentic performance. Specifically, leading a 9-minute solo, "Tu che di gel sei cinta - Liu bonta!", without any boredom was literally extraordinary. With this score, she conveyed infallible sacrifice of the humble servant and touched me. From the above-mentioned set design and Hartig's breathtaking devotion, I could feel a kind of aura today.
However, Marco Berti's Calaf was not compelling. The biggest reason why I wanted to see this opera was definitely "Nessun dorm!". When it was played, I was all ears with my hands folded together. Disappointingly, I could not sense any emotional eruption from Berti because of his timid devotion. And I think the others felt in the same way since no one ventured to applaud though his solo was finished. Overall, Berti's performance made the whole opera partly mediocre by deteriorating other outstanding points that are mentioned above.
Consequently, this experience made me consider the concept of aura. Defining aura, Walter Benjamin related aura to "authenticity" and "the her and now of the original". Precisely, he defined aura as "the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be". I am still not sure what kind of distance he indicated, but I guess that he meant the distance between a recipient and an art work which marked an outstanding moment in history. In this sense, the 1987 version of Turandot, in which Plácido Domingo played Calaf, can be considered to possess an aura, due to matchless performance of him and other partners whereas this 2015 version lacks it. However, now I am skeptical of Benjamin' statement:
In the light of this description, we can readily grasp the social basis of the aura's present decay. It rests on two circumstances, both linked to the increasing emergence of the masses and the growing intensity of their movements. Namely: the desire of the present-day masses to "get closer" to things, and their equally passionate concern for overcoming each thing's uniqueness by assimilating it as a reproduction. [...] by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique.
(Critical Visions in Film Theory, eds. Timothy Corrigan, et al, Bedford/St. Martin's, Boston: 2011 ,233-234. Emphasis original)
It is true that the result of filmmaking does not possess actuality - that is, "the here and now" - because it was photographed and edited prior to spectatorship. And throughout reproduction, any audience can experience exactly the same quality. However, theatrical actuality is easily accomplished because of its intimate distance from the audience. In other words, production of theatrical art becomes a moment of consumption immediately.
Nevertheless, such immediacy is not a spontaneous expression of an artist's talent. A successful stage show is a result of countless rehearsals. I assume a theater artist's state on the stage is an overlapped sum of various possibilities, which can be varied by his/her practices and other circumstances. For instance, even though Plácido Domingo has prepared his performance hundreds of times, if he fails to touch the audience due to his illness, the very show will not be authentic.
On the other hand, a movie is an extracted essence of authenticity. To pursue perfection in their profession, the filmmakers do not hesitate to photograph the same shot for hundreds of takes. In this case, "the here and now" does not exist in the prospect spectator's point of view. Instead, the filmmakers contain their "here and now" in their work. Thanks to the camera, filmmakers present the actual sites in which they recorded such moments as a sunset on the seashore, the first kiss of lovers, or tragic crime against a victim. And thanks to cinema's reproducibility, this essence can be inherited to next generations intactly. It is irony that we can feel Plácido Domingo's aura via the recorded video of his 1987 performance.
Therefore, I argue that aura is not an medium-specific concept. Although this conclusion is superficial, I think this might be able to stave off unjust prejudices, which downplay cinema a mere reproduction of reality or a relatively easier art form. In addition, I think that other arguments regarding the verisimilitude of CGI can be stemmed from this interpretation of aura. If cinematic reality can be also defined as an aura, it is debatable if CGI lacks authenticity.
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