Bordeaux.(International)(Turandot at Opera National de Bordeaux)(Opera Review)

The revival of Turandot at the Opera National de Bordeaux provided an opportunity to hear American soprano Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet in the title role. Much admired in Paris at the Opera Bastille in Rolf Liebermann's Medea, Matthias Pintscher's L'Espace Dernier and Philippe Manoury's K..., the soprano will also be taking the lead later in the Bordeaux season for the important world premiere of Les Rois, by Philippe Fenelon. Freed from the exacting musical confines of the contemporary idiom, Charbonnet was a theatrical and compelling Turandot, but the taxing tessitura of the role occasionally betrayed a lack of evenly produced tone a the top of her range. Her dark, mezzo-like tone and purposeful phrasing brought authority to low-lying phrases, but the climactic top notes of the role, while always in tune, too frequently lost tonal body in this courageous performance. Her Calaf was Jeong Wong Lee, who had rather the opposite qualities--thrilling top notes but little in the way of personal commitment or phrasing. The purely vocal results were exciting nonetheless; the tenor obviously has listened hard to the late Franco Corelli, but he has not as yet developed a strong stage or musical personality. His relations with Liu and his father, Timur, never seemed very deeply explored in Jean-Louis Pichon's straightforward, ...