Arts & Minds: Turandot, Big-Time

On the eve of its 100th anniversary, the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires packed up tons of equipment and scenery, several hundred performers and a swarm of technicians, and deposited the entire load in Mexico City's Auditorio Nacional for a four-day run of Turandot, beginning tonight.

No small feat, even for one of the world's great opera houses. In fact everything about this production of Puccini's gorgeously gloomy posthumous tragedy, originally performed in an outdoor stadium last fall (Argentina's spring), is outsized. That includes the cavernous auditorium itself, big enough to hold several Bellas Artes theaters. Intimacy will necessarily yield to spectacle.

The singers, for example, will have to be miked, but that’s an impurity that doesn't seem to bother those involved with the production. "The demand on the singers is exactly the same," says artistic director Marcelo Lombardero. "They'll be singing just as if they were in a theater."

It's the sound technicians, not the singers, who have the most work to do. One task is getting the words heard in the back rows without overdoing the amplification. "We have to find the level that's most like the natural human voice," Lombardero says. "It's not going to be the same as it would be for Iron Maiden."

For José Luis Duval, the Guanajuato-born tenor with the lead male role, being miked is the least of the performers' problems. "We're doing four Turandots in four days, so we need to stay healthy and rested," he says. "Most of us came up from sea-level cities in Argentina and Italy to Mexico City, with its contamination and altitude. That's a much bigger challenge than two little cords pinned on our clothes."

The cast and crew is mostly Argentinean, but the two leads are not. Duval is Mexican, and soprano Cynthia Makris, who plays the Chinese princess Turandot, is American. So is musical director Stefan Lano, who has been with the Teatro Colón for 15 years, as a guest conductor and then musical director. He's also working in Mexico on a project of Argentine Criollo music to be performed at Bellas Artes later in the year.

Lano has conducted for the San Francisco Opera and the New York Met, but he's just as happy working in Latin America, thank you. "They're not quite as judgmental, not quite as prejudicial," he says. "In the United States I've had agents telling me I need to let my hair grow so my image would be more like a conductor."

That would be a shame. Lano keeps what's left of his hair cropped down to near-nothing, and with his sharp-featured long face and unignorable glasses, he's a younger version of Paul's grandfather in Hard Day's Night, if Paul's grandfather could conduct Wozzeck, Salomé, Bomarzo and Jonny Spielt Auf.

Lano isn't a big fan of the simultaneous translation from Italian into Spanish that will be seen on a video screen during the Turandot performances, but accepts its appeal to the public. "I'd prefer it if the whole world were polyglot," he says. "Musicians generally have an ear for languages, and I pride myself on speaking many languages poorly."

Truth is, Lano's Spanish is very good — confident and fluid, with Argentine coloring and a hint of the Boston Brahmin. He's put it to good use.

"I walk around Mexico City a lot and talk to people, and they are just lovely," he says. "From what you read in the U.S. press or the sound bites you hear on MSNBC or CNN, you'd never believe there's a country of such high culture across the border."

Given the Teatro Colón's track record, I can comfortably recommend this Turandot, sight unseen, for those who live in Mexico City or will be visiting in the next several days. The performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday are not sold out as of this writing, and there's talk of a fifth date on Sunday if the demand is there. Tickets are available at the usual places — Mix-Up, Liverpool, the Auditorio Nacional box office, and Ticketmaster (55 5325 9000 or www.ticketmaster.com).