Here come the reviews!

We had a bunch of reviewers at Sunday's performance of Turandot, and as the reviews come in, I'll be sure to post them here for you to read.

Here's one from The Star Ledger:

"Turandot," With a Touch of Royalty
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
The Star-Ledger
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

One has come to expect increasingly fine things from New Jersey Opera Theater, as it grows in ambition from season to season. The Princeton company, which stages its summer offerings at the McCarter Theatre Center's 360-seat Berlind Theatre, launched its fifth season Sunday with a nearly sold-out debut at the house's 1,100-capacity Matthews Theatre.

The event was a semi-staged presentation of Puccini's "Turandot," which will also serve as New Jersey Opera Theater's debut at New Brunswick's 1,800-seat State Theatre on Sunday. The education-oriented company makes the most of the Berlind, casting young singers from around the country in intimate productions. This starrier "Turandot" — which includes two Metropolitan Opera veterans in the cast — had no trouble projecting in the bigger McCarter venue, despite not having the usual grandiose trappings accorded the work.

A chamber-sized Westfield Symphony Orchestra and the 100-voice Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia are on stage behind the costumed singers and a few props. (A camera on conductor Steven Mosteller projected his cues to stage monitors for the singers upfront.) Although not as colorful and physical as the Trenton production of "Turandot" by Boheme Opera New Jersey in November, the Princeton performance was more persuasive musically.

The drama still seemed as grimly pointless as ever, but no amount of spectacle can hide that, anyway. Puccini was never happy with the "Turandot" libretto, and he died before completing the music. (Franco Alfano composed the last part of Act III.) The story is one of blind desire and vengeful cruelty, set in ancient China. Obsessed with avenging an ancestor's rape, the title princess subjects her suitors to a riddle contest with fatal penalties for losing. An exiled prince, Calaf, is obsessed with melting the icy Turandot, even though he's never seen her. He ignores his ailing father's protests and the devotion of Liu, a slave girl. Calaf solves the riddle to possess the princess, but not before Liu sacrifices her life for him.

None of the characters are more than cardboard cutouts, but Puccini wrote one of his most moving tunes — the tenor aria "Nessun Dorma" — for Calaf. And the composer tasked Turandot with arias as cruel as her temperament. Sharon Sweet, who has sung Turandot from the Met to China's Forbidden City, is the rare soprano with the mettle to hit those high-flying top notes while phrasing with some lyrical subtlety. ...She sang the daylights out of those arias.

As Calaf, tenor Allan Glassman excelled in steely outbursts, his Met credits revealing themselves as hefilled the room. ...Soprano Barbara Shirvis was an attractive Liu, her tremulousness apt.

If Puccini's use of Far Eastern scales seems like postcard exotica now, the choruses can have power — at least when performed with the amplitude of the Mendelssohn Club chorus (prepared by Alan Harler). The lack of scenery didn't matter, as Patricia Hibbert's opulent costumes — especially those for Turandot and the ministerial clowns Ping, Pang and Pong — gave the eye plenty to enjoy.