Giacomo Puccini, Turandot

Well, I certainly wanted to enjoy Turandot, but my ability to do so was severely compromised by what are, to me, some major flaws in the libretto. As beautiful as the music is, it's hard not to notice the problems that Puccini himself died without overcoming. For starters, the whole thing is predicated on the notion of senseless murder ("Turandot the Pure /will be the bride of the man of royal blood/who shall solve the three riddles which she shall set./But if he fail in the test/he must submit his proud head to the sword!") That's a nice gimmick for a fairy tale, but it really doesn't make any sense. It's hard to imagine anyone actually being stupid enough to try this. He would have to be incredibly arrogant, and kind of an idiot as well. Enter Prince Calàf. As Act One opens, he's just been reunited with his blind father, the deposed king Timur, whom he had thought to be dead (and vice versa). Both are overjoyed to see each other (well, not literally in Timur's case because he's blind, but you take my meaning) and Calàf proclaims his eternal thanks to the servant girl Liù who was apparently responsible for leading his father to safety. A couple of minutes later, though, Calàf catches a glimpse of Princess Turandot and falls, apparently, madly in love with her, causing him to suddenly no longer care at all about the fate of his father or Liù.

And yeah, I get it, love makes you do some craaaazy things, but dude literally goes from "Oh daddy, I thought I'd never see you again! Thank you so much, Liù, for taking care of my father!" to, a minute later, "Hey Liù, if I die, take good care of pops for me, aight? I gotta go chase some royal tail. Peace!" Now, I understand that the librettists were trying to show the almost supernatural power of this sudden love spell under which Calàf has fallen under, which is why they spend half of Act One having everyone try to convince him not to pursue the princess. But then, if he's pretty much in thrall, is he really supposed to be brave? Zombies aren't brave. And if he's not in thrall, then he's really just an incredibly self-absorbed asshole. With drama, it's best for heroes to be at least somewhat sympathetic. Calàf, throughout the opera, is the opposite: his behavior is almost always reprehensible. And yet we are supposed to be on his side. This lack of a central, relatably human character ends up being the opera's fatal flaw, in my opinion at least.

In Act Two, we are introduced to Princess Turandot, who is revealed to be pretty much a psychopath who gleefully celebrates the beheading of every man who tries to win her hand. She tells us (and herself) that she's acting out of revenge for a female ancestor who was conquered by a man, but I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't agree that this justifies her heinous acts of gratuitous bloodshed.

This alone would be enough to ruin the opera for me. A Prince, who is either an asshole or a zombie, wasting his time and risking his life to marry a Princess whose chief pastime is cold-blooded murder? That would work for me only if the libretto's authors were aware of how crazy this is and played it as darkly comic, instead of the "love conquers all" theme that they were apparently going for.

Anyway, Act Three is where it all really falls apart for me. After having answered all three of Turandot's riddles, Calàf has, for reasons unknown to anyone but him, arbitrarily decided that he can win the Princess's heart by posing a "riddle" of his own: guess his name before sunrise and he will voluntarily put his head on the chopping block; otherwise, she has to marry him. This proclamation causes the princess to immediately order everyone under her command (which, I guess, is pretty much everyone in China) to find out what Calàf's name is before dawn, or else. Or else what? Death, that's what. Yes, the penalty for failure is death *again*. This princess LOVES MURDER.

Now, as you might expect, the princess's servants immediately go to Calàf and, in a kind of breathless desperation, plead with him, offering him pretty much anything he could possibly want if he will just tell them his name and GO AWAY. And then, when nothing they say gets through, they simply beg him to spare their lives from the cruel death that awaits them. And what is Calàf's response to all this? "Inutili preghiere! Inutili minacce!/Crollasse il mondo, voglio Turandot!" ["Useless entreaties! Vain threats!/Though the skies fall I will have Turandot!"] That's right. He doesn't even *pretend* to give a shit.

With daggers drawn, the servants insist that he relent. And just when they are about to give Calàf a well-deserved stabbing, a bunch of soldiers stomp in with none other than poor Liù and Timur. Having seen Calàf with them earlier, the servants know that they must know his name. The princess appears and the servants explain the situation. At this point Calàf does basically the only decent thing he does in the entire opera: he lies to Turandot, insisting that the two prisoners don't know him. Liù, in an incredibly selfless act of bravery that immediately makes her the opera's only true hero, says that she alone knows the prince's name.

Turandot orders the soldiers to restrain Calàf. They do their best to extract the name from Liù with the aid of torture, but she defiantly says that she'll die first. Turandot orders the soldiers to stop and asks Liù how she can be so courageous. Liù answers with a long speech declaring her hopelessly unrequited love for the prince. After her speech, she stabs herself with a soldier's dagger, martyring herself for her love.

What would you expect Calàf to do at this point? Surely not wait for everyone to leave and then start making out with Turandot (whom he calls "Principessa di morte"), but that's exactly what he does. As the New Grove Dictionary of Opera puts it:

Clearly the man who can persist in his wooing of a woman of whom he knows nothing, and whom he has every reason to dislike, immediately after a slave-girl has killed herself for his sake, is bound to forfeit our sympathy.

The princess says of her new lover, "C'era negli occhi tuoi/la superba certezza …/E t'ho odiato per quella …/E per quella t'ho amato" - ["In your eyes I saw/the proud certainty of victory …/And I hated you for it …/And for it I loved you"]. I guess this is supposed to come off as cosmic and grand, like Tristan und Isolde, but in light of what has just taken place minutes before on the stage, it sounds unbelievably crass, shallow and cold. Whatever romantic feelings have just been kindled between the two lovers seems to be based on physical attraction and a Romantic veneration of the ego reminiscent of the novels of Ayn Rand. (Seriously, doesn't Dominique give almost this exact same speech to Howard Roark at some point in The Fountainhead?) You can tell Puccini wanted Turandot to be about love as a transfiguring force, but he never quite figured out how to resolve these problems, so it comes off as being more about a young man's horny hubris and a girl who celebrates his utter lack of modesty or conscience.

I can see why people still like the opera, especially as stunning visual spectacle accompanied by some gorgeous orchestral and vocal music. I, in fact, enjoyed parts of this opera a great deal. But as a whole, it feels like an empty vessel, a failure whose parts are greater than their sum.

Jeff Beck, Blow By Blow

What if I told you that the most celebrated instrumental guitar album of all time ends with a keyboard solo, on a track dominated by a string section (orchestrated by none other than George Martin), and from which the last note of guitar had faded away 3 minutes earlier? That it is an album in which song structure, melody, flow and balance all trump showcases of instrumental virtuosity, guitar-based or otherwise? And that it contains not one but two Stevie Wonder songs (one of which appears on no other album)? Does that sound like crazy talk to you?

If so, then it appears you haven't been properly introduced to Jeff Beck's 1975 masterpiece, Blow By Blow. The first album credited just to Beck (rather than the Jeff Beck Group), he obviously decided that this was to be something special, a more personal statement, perhaps. After all, you don't start working on arrangements with George Martin unless you've got it in mind to do something out of the ordinary. Martin, who ended up producing the album, is probably not the first name that comes to mind when you think of instrumental jazz-fusion, but his talents were in fact remarkably well-suited to what Beck was trying to achieve: a harmonious blend of soaring melodies, funky grooves and moments of wild improvisational abandon. They succeeded, on every level, probably beyond their own expectations.

My head almost exploded trying to figure out which song from Blow By Blow to present here. For an instrumental album showcasing Jeff Beck's guitar magic, you wouldn't think that narrative flow would figure into its construction so much, but you'd be wrong. The fact is, this damn thing is so expertly crafted that choosing one piece from it only makes me think about the pieces I'm leaving behind. One reason for this is that, as originally presented on vinyl, most of the songs on each side segued directly into one another. But this isn't like Miles Ahead where, to me at least, the songs could've gone in any order and are just made to segue as a kind of production trick. Here, the album is conceived as a unit of artistic presentation, much like the Beatles' output beginning with Revolver. (No doubt Martin has everything to do with the album's cohesive structure, not to mention the inclusion of a reggae-tinged version of "She's A Woman.") Just as Sgt. Pepper wouldn't be the same album if "A Day In The Life" was shoved in the middle somewhere, every song on Blow By Blow is placed where it is as carefully as syllables in a line of poetry.

This is still more of a feat when you learn that about half of the tracks on the album were basically fashioned out of live-in-studio jams. I reckon the key here was Beck's choice of sidemen: keyboardist Max Middleton (who worked on the Sgt. Pepper film soundtrack with Martin), Chinese-Jamaican bassist Phil Chen and Guyanese-born, Trinidadian-raised drummer Richard Bailey. These are tasteful session players who know how to lay down seriously funky grooves without stepping on each other's toes. (Chen's playing, particularly on "Constipated Duck" - a title you must love or else you lack a soul - is some of the best 70's funk bass I've heard outside of a Parliament/Funkadelic or Sly & The Family Stone record.)

So anyway, call me unoriginal but I chose the first song on the album. Entitled "You Know What I Mean," I think it's a perfect introduction to the unique charms of this album: the funky upbeatness, the breezy, carefree nature of the melodies, the conversational tone of Beck's guitar. What I hope this song also demonstrates is the album's accessibility. Blow By Blow was not a #4 Billboard chart hit by accident; i.e., it's not just for wonky guitar fanatics or jazzbos. It's something special, an instrumental album that isn't all about itself in the way too many such albums are nowadays (too many albums in general, actually, but that's another topic). To put it more simply, it is fun to listen to.

You can probably find all the songs from the album on YouTube, but then you won't experience the magic of this album's flow and great segues. Do yourself a favor and download the highest-quality version of Blow By Blow you can find. It's an album that benefits greatly from high fidelity sound reproduction.