Turandot’s Empire

30, or sculpture

Puccini died in Brussels in 1924, leaving the score of Turandot unfinished. The open end of the opera therefore presents a certain dramaturgical problem, which, paradoxically, offers great freedom to the director. In his staging, Christophe Coppens chose to explore the psyche of the title role through, among other things, three nightmarish set elements built by the sculptors of La Monnaie.

First, a dragon-headed chimney, nearly three metres high, emerges from the loft’s front door. Inspired by both Chinese and Venetian art, this polystyrene piece weighs around a hundred kilos and contains a real fireplace inside a solid steel and cement structure. The chimney as a whole is covered in a coating imitating dressed stone and mounted on castors.

Opposite the main staircase is a sculpture consisting of thirty arms moulded from those of the teams in the carpentry and props workshops; this provided a variety of arms rather than a uniform model. These arms were made from alginate (a silicone derived from seaweed) and placed on a circular wooden plaque. Cleverly concealed gaps in the plaque allow three dancers to pass their own arms through the plaque to bring the sculpture to life.

Lastly, the back wall of the stage features a large bloody wound. Sculpted from mattress foam to achieve an organic shape, its surface was made even more realistic by a skin-like effect observed under a microscope, an effect discovered quite by chance in the workshops. Indeed, when the Lycra chosen to create this human-skin effect was unpacked, the removal of the adhesive paper that was firmly glued in place damaged the synthetic fibre, making it look even more convincing. When folded over, the Lycra strips took on the texture of an epidermal membrane.

1995, or tapestry

In one way or another, almost every wall and piece of furniture in the set is covered in fabric. Every corner of the tapestry workshop was occupied for several months to this end. Padded walls were made using a silky upholstery fabric, lined with felt to give it a rounded appearance. Mounting these elements was made particularly complex due to the thinness of the fabric, which had to be weighted down with an iron bar to homogenize the surface and prevent pleats.

The upholstering of the lounge built into the forestage occurred in several stages; the pieces built in the sculpture and joinery workshops had to be adapted on stage. Two trap doors were concealed in the seats to allow the fine black kabuki fabric to disappear seamlessly, a fabric which emerges from the hangers in Act 3.

In addition to the cushions, the seats of twenty-two chairs, the red velvet-covered bed and the fine veils on the windows, our teams also refurbished the large red curtain that adorned the stage at La Monnaie in 1995. Made from a thick velvet whose antique tones give it a deep, amber colour, this curtain was adjusted to fit the new dimensions of the stage frame so that it could be reused later. Each square metre of this curtain weighs 600 grams, for a total of 250 kilos.

3 and 2, or paint

As usual, most of the set’s objects and surfaces were given a patina by our painters, such as the arms of the above sculpture to create the illusion of realistic white skin, or the faux grey stone floor of the terrace on the garden side. It was also in La Monnaie’s paint workshop that the meticulously precise colour palette for the production was developed, thanks to a series of tests and samples carried out over several weeks.

The floors of the loft required a month’s work: a very precise layout of circles and stars had to be followed to create a marble covering in three different tones. In addition, two original paintings were created: a portrait of a young Asian woman and a backlit abstract landscape, measuring 2.5 by 3 metres.

135, or the costumes

A multidisciplinary artist, Christophe Coppens is also a fashion designer who creates the costumes for all his productions. For Turandot, there are no fewer than 135 costumes on stage, more than half of which were made in our workshops, work having begun at the start of the season. Among these costumes, an ambitious collection of haute couture dresses for the thirty-two female choristers. The matching jewellery and hats were made by the decorations and hats workshop, while the footwear was created from stock in the shoemaking workshop. During the final scene of the show, Turandot wraps herself in a blanket, a magnificent patchwork of 140 pieces of three different fabrics made by hand.

The appearance of the title role from the flies at the end of Act 1 is one of the highlights of the show, thanks in particular to a masterly black coat covering an iron frame. The coat consists of several different fabrics, beaded, pleated and jacquard. For the alterations (for which it was necessary to sneak inside the frame with a headlamp) and the dressing of the singer (carried out at a height of twelve metres in the middle of the flies, with a safety harness), this costume required almost speleological skills on the part of our seamstresses and dressers.

23, or the accessories

Lastly, what would a society party be without an abundance of food and a multitude of art objects? The props workshop worked on no fewer than eighteen different projects for the decor. Their creations include a mountain of macaroons, an impressive floral arrangement, a huge Asian vase that spits out banknotes, a sculpted skeleton chair with straps and mounted on wheels, chrome-plated steel bells, seventeen feather dusters, seventy champagne flutes, and twenty-three fake gourmet plates. For these meals, the members of the team let their imaginations run wild, creating the plates from their stock. For example, sections of pipe were transformed into cannelloni and pieces of foam board were turned into magnificent salmon steaks.

More than seventy-five people worked for months behind the scenes to materialize Christophe Coppens’ ambitious vision. By redoubling their efforts in terms of creativity, ingenuity, precision, technical skills and enthusiasm, our teams helped to fashion the visual counterpart to the musical extravaganza of Turandot with which we conclude the season.

Pictures: Pieter Claes & Manon Kahn