Turandot | Opera Australia
15 January 2026, Sydney Opera House, NSW
There’s been quite a bit of buzz around this new production of Turandot, and that’s not surprising as it arrives 35 years after its last new staging at the Sydney Opera House, and in the 100th anniversary year of Puccini’s final opera. It’s a complete re-imagining of the work, rather than a simple refresh, and you could feel it before the first note – a sense of something big about to happen. Curtains up, we see a darkened blank canvas of a stage with a single figure draped in Chinese traditional robes front and centre, and then… silence.
It was a genuinely original way to begin. No overture. Just Lou-Ling, a character we usually only hear about, physically, silently, acting out her capture. It was raw and uncomfortable, there were audible gasps from the audience at her violent death. It immediately set the scene for director Ann Yee’s vision for this Turandot as something new, bold and visceral.
Synopsis in a sentence – Princess Turandot hardened by ancestral trauma sets lethal riddles for her suitors, until love — freely given and freely sacrificed — forces her to confront what she has been protecting.
As the music begins Turandot’s massive avatar looms over everything goddess-like, statue-like, with more than a whiff of propaganda. This stunning video artwork subtly moves and changes colour, its eyes open and close, light flickers across its face. It feels present, ever-watching. Controlling. And later, when that image fractures and disappears forever, you really feel the loss of the armour that Turandot has projected onto her world.
But the set is not solely created via video. Elizabeth Gadsby’s staging is in fact the shining star of the production. An absolute engineering marvel, it kept reminding me of a Chinese puzzle box: every time you think you’ve seen the shape of it, something else opens. Walls fold in and out. Doors appear where mouths once were. Staircases rise, columns shift, holes open unexpectedly. All of it sits on a revolving floor that moves not just scenery but people — chorus, dancers, soloists — constantly reshaping the stage picture. It’s enormous, almost too big for the theatre, and completely entrancing.
And there are a lot of people to move around too! About 50 in the chorus, plus the children’s chorus, they make a real crowd. Movement is ritualised and precise, with singers and dancers placed for greatest theatrical impact, often across multiple levels of the set. At one point the children appear carrying highly polished silver bowls that reflect light absolutely everywhere — walls, bodies, faces. Visually, it was all so delicious. So much so that there were moments when I completely forgot to follow the surtitles. Confession: I’m not much of a grand-opera person (yet) so I need the surtitles to follow the story, but here the visuals were doing so much storytelling that I simply forgot to read (and it didn’t matter one iota!)
Three cheers for the orchestra (both in the pit and offstage), who did an excellent job all night of staying connected to the singers, even with everything happening on stage. Conductor Henrik Nánási (in his O|A debut) leaned into the music beautifully with the unmistakable Chinese folk song flavour that inspired Puccini’s orchestration coming through clearly. The strings absolutely milked the famous “Nessun dorma” aria in the best way. Young Woo Kim as Calaf was terrific with perfect pitch, as was Rebecca Nash’s powerful Turandot: so much presence from these two singers.
There was humour too, unexpectedly. The three administrators, tapping madly at their computers as they coded Turandot’s avatar, and communicating with walkie-talkies from their warehouse-like headquarters — it was silly and a quite daggy. With all the weight of trauma and revenge in this production some comic relief was welcome.
Maria Teresa Leva’s (Liù’s) voice is extraordinary in the seemingly endless final note of her first aria “Signore, ascolta!”. Her death, using a pin from the ancestral crown, felt symbolic and devastating and the ghostly ancestor leading her away closed the emotional circle of the production in a way that I thought really worked.
The ending happens fast. After Calaf passes her riddles Turandot resists him, then she yields, then there’s a kiss, the crowd goes wild, and suddenly love has triumphed. The sound of rejoice is massive from the first class chorus and genuinely moving.
Walking out, I heard one audience member emote, “I adore this production — it’s amazing.”
This Turandot is visually spectacular and genuinely fresh. World-class leads, a fantastic orchestra and video art that wows. A must see!
