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The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Puccini’s “Turandot” is one of the most lavish and intricate in the company’s repertoire, a spectacle that includes an imperial palace, a resplendent throne room and expansive gardens.
But on Wednesday night the audience had to do without the usual visual pleasures of the opera. An improvisation in the main elevator backstage at the Met forced the company to put on a semi-staged version at the last minute, with the cast and chorus singing from a makeshift stage.
Peter Gelb, general director of the Met, came on stage before the show to explain the situation.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to tell you that this will not be a normal night at the opera,” he said. “Even though our stage won’t work, the show will go on.”
After crews worked through the night, the traffic jam was resolved, although there was some damage to the tracks behind the stage that the Met was still repairing Thursday morning. The performance of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” on Thursday night was expected to proceed as usual.
On Wednesday, audience members were offered a refund if they wanted to leave, and about 150 people did so, the Met said. But most stayed and offered warm applause when the host, Oksana Lyniv, entered the pit. (The Met, which has about 3,800 seats, said paid performance attendance was about 80 percent of capacity before the problem was announced.)
Gelb said in an interview that the machinery jammed around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, while the Met was changing sets for “Turandot” after a rehearsal of Puccini’s “La Rondine,” which opens next week. Crew members attempted to use saws to cut steel bars to free the elevator, but their efforts were unsuccessful.
At approximately 6:30 p.m., an hour before the show was to begin, Gelb had to make a decision: cancel the show or go ahead with a stripped-down version. He said he was reluctant to turn away the public.
“Everyone came together,” he said.
The Met used a piece of scenery from the second act of “Turandot” (a wall of the imperial palace) as a backdrop, to give it some color. The action was limited to approximately the first 20 feet of the stage.
Gelb tried to encourage the singers by telling them that their music would be more powerful and told tenor SeokJong Baek that when he sang the famous aria “Nessun dorma,” “you will be much closer to the audience.”
To show gratitude to the audience, Baek sang a rare encore of that aria. And the Met, unable to throw gold confetti onto the stage at the end of the opera due to traffic jams, fired it from the balconies, over the audience.
Technical setbacks have rarely stopped productions at the Met. In 1966, when the Lincoln Center home opened, a record player malfunctioned during a dress rehearsal of Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” Soprano Leontyne Price narrowly escaped being trapped inside the pyramid above. And in 2011, Wagner’s “Die Walküre” was released. delayed for 45 minutes due to a technical problem with the 45-ton set.