additional photos provided by Cory Weaver, copyright protected images
"What to do about Turandot? Washington National Opera has some fresh ideas in Francesca Zambello’s visually and vocally stunning new production. The tale has been transposed into an aggressively industrial possibly-quasi-China, branded by unfamiliar but unsettlingly evocative flags, and caged between three imposing stories of scaffolding. Set designer Wilson Chin effectively imparts a foreboding vibe, unstuck in time by steeped in stubborn history. This Turandot is also one of the largest productions WNO has ever staged, involving some 274 players, singers, dancers and crew onstage and off. But Zambello’s presentation is clean, crisp, fluid and remarkably uncluttered."– Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post
"The new ending also works because Ms. Zambello’s production updates the story from its fairy-tale origins to a contemporary totalitarian state. Wilson Chin’s set of looming industrial structures, their bars giving off a prison-like vibe, and Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting, with its shadowy grays, blaring fluorescent whites and lurid reds, all suggest a very unhappy place. Turandot’s blood-red dress in Act 2 is a fitting compliment to the stained knife hanging from the omnipresent guillotine."– Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal
"Incredibly rich in detail– from staging to technical aspects– Washington National Opera’s production of Turandot is a production for the ages. The entire creative team has given us a Turandot that respects the glorious bones of its beloved Italian opera while adding a new ending that gives the opera a more mature and modern appeal. Set designer Wilson Chin’s expansive yet logistically effective set design is replete with scaffolding, multi-tiers and grid-like structures that show the masses of the dispossessed clamoring and witnessing the events arising from this enigmatic and unique opera."– David Friscic, Broadway World
"The sets by Wilson Chin evoke various 20th-century totalitarian regimes with the grim spectacle of a joyous dance by young women in drab gray clothes and red armbands, a Shostakovich-esque irony. A tangle of pipes and stairs evocative of a factory, or perhaps a prison, make up the main set, creating a closed-off feeling that only opens up with Turandot’s heart does the same in the finale."– Andrew Lindermann Malone, Washington Classical Review
