Turandot Images

 

In March I photographed a dress rehearsal of the Opera Southwest's production of Turandot, by Giacomo Puccini.  If you don't know the story of the opera -- and the interesting story of its composition (Puccini died before finishing it) -- you can read about it here. 

Turandot is the source of the famous aria, "Nessun Dorma" ("No one shall sleep"), made popular in the 1990s by Luciano Pavarotti.  You can hear (and watch) him here.  A stylistically more contemporary version (including portions in English) was sung by Aretha Franklin at the 1998 Grammy Awards when Pavarotti was scheduled to sing it, but fell ill at the last minute.  You can see and hear her characteristically Aretha version here.

Rather than providing an illustrated version of the opera story in this post, I'm just going to share a number of my favorite images from the OSW production.  Images from the entire dress rehearsal are available at my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Principal singers in the production were Michelle Johnson as the heartless Princess Turandot . . .

Rodell Rosel as Calaf, incognito Prince of Tartary . . .

Zaikuan Song as Timur, Calaf's father, the deposed and blind King of Tartary . . .

Bizhou Chang as Liu, devoted servant to Timur, and in love with Calaf . . .

. . . and Carlos Archuleta, Michael Rodriguez, and James Flora as court ministers Ping, Pang, and Pong (left to right):

Here are some additional images from the performance.  I hope you enjoy them.

Nessun dorma!

If you would like to see images from the complete performance (including the ones above) in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!