Ai Weiwei’s Turandot

When Opera Becomes a Canvas for Global Crises and Artistic Defiance

Everything is art. Everything is politics, — Ai Weiwei

The documentary Ai Weiwei’s Turandot illustrates the significance of art in our lives. Originally asked to direct Giacomo Pucinni’s longstanding and unfinished opera in 2017, renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei realized an opportunity to revisit and complete a circle he began 33 years earlier, in 1987, as an extra in Franco Zeffirelli’s Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Ai Weiwei opened the film, saying he is not interested in opera and does not listen to music. 

However, the artist “likes to do what he is not good at,” he noted his challenge was to find out if Pucinni’s vision still works in contemporary philosophy and art.

“My Turandot is going to be different,” said Ai Weiwei. 

Ai Weiwei’s production of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot showed in Rome from March 22 to 31, 2022, at the Teatro dell’Opera. The film recently screened at Laemmle’s Monica Film Center in Los Angeles.

Puccini, the great Italian composer, wrote La bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and Turandot – all are among today’s most performed operas. Each one features heartrending music at its center. His final opera, Turandot, which includes the great Nessun dorma, one of the most recognizable and beloved arias in the operatic repertoire, is one of the few 20th-century operas to have sustained a firm foothold in opera houses worldwide. 

While his early work encompassed traditional, late-19th-century Romantic Italian opera, Puccini became better known for writing in the verismo style – Italian for realism. His works are known for their lush melodies, emotional intensity, and keen understanding of dramatic storytelling.

Turandot, written in three acts, is based on Carlo Gozzi’s play of the same name, which draws inspiration from the Persian collection of stories, One Thousand and One Nights. A Persian word, Turandot, means “the daughter of Turan” – a region of Central Asia which used to be part of the Persian Empire.

Set in ancient China, Puccini’s opera tells the story of a beautiful but cold-hearted Chinese princess, Turandot, who challenges her suitors with riddles. Suitors who fail to answer correctly will be executed. The narrative unfolds as an unknown prince, Calaf, takes up the challenge, risking his life for the chance to win Turandot’s love. 

Ai Weiwei’s Turandot follows the artist’s journey as he aims to present the complex challenges that afflict humanity today: the Ukraine war, refugee crises, the COVID pandemic, and more. The film explores the lasting vitality of Puccini’s masterpiece while highlighting its deep connection to Ai Weiwei’s life and artistic vision.

An old family friend and collaborator of Ai Weiwei’s, Chian Ching, the opera’s choreographer, adds an intimate look into Ai Weiwei’s perspective and motivation. Ching also worked on the same 1987 Turandot production as her comrade. She explained that Ai Wetwei’s father, Ai Quing, was exiled for many years in Xinjiang because he was a revolutionary poet, and that the son relates a lot to his father’s spirit.

Together, they provide an exploration of the intersection between art, politics, and the human experience. 

In particular, the artist’s staging of Turandot is a social commentary displayed via artistic installation. As described by Andrea Miglio, the film’s set design supervisor, Ai Weiwei’s initial idea for the set alluded to a piece that he created 20 years earlier, an extrusion of the geographical map of China. For Turandot, the extrusion was multiplied to encompass the whole world, spreading it throughout the stage. In this installation, he organized where people stood on stage to emphasize the higher or lower class. The holes in this extrusion are often filled with poorer people, and the stairs, which are elevated, represent the oligarchs or the rich. It took 9 months to build this set, a job that would normally take 3 months. Ai Weiwei avoided “Chineseness” but rather made a global map of the stage, connecting to the artist’s bigger vision; it’s not a local issue, it’s a human race issue. 

“Ai Weiwei is not a man of theater, but he was guided by the adaptation of ideas,” said Miglio. 

Ai Weiwei explains the psychology behind the main character, Turandot (which I won’t mention, so as not to spoil), with an astute understanding of the human condition.

Tenor/Calaf (Michael Fabiano) said he knows Ai Weiwei as a free speech magnet. 

“Calaf is a freedom fighter …. Winning Turandot means changing policy for the world, changing global ideas. If he can win Turandot, he changes idealism for the rest of the world. If he is able to conquer or compell a very important leader that freedom of ideas is going to bring more prosperity, then the rest of the world wins. And I think that’s what he’s fighting for.” 

Ai Weiwei described Turandot as the perfect story about China; “both the fantasy about it and the beauty and crudeness; the imagination about China.”

The revolutionary artist and iconoclastic activist’s selection of this opera, once banned in China, aligns with his challenging of norms. The film follows Ai Weiwei as he infuses the opera with a contemporary perspective, bridging the past and the present. His incorporation of installation art, performance art, and conceptual art resulted in an original and immersive experience.

As an activist, AiWeiwei has been openly critical of the Chinese government’s stance on democracy and human rights. Noted in the film, Ai Weiwei investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of “tofu-dreg schools” in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport on April 3, for “economic crimes.” He was detained for 81 days without charges. Since that time, he emerged as an instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation’s most vocal political commentators. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai Weiwei uses a wide range of platforms to share new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values.

In his director’s statement, Maxim Derevianko said when they started shooting in February 2020 he was trying to make a documentary about Ai Weiwei’s creative process with Puccini’s Turandot —but then something incredible happened. 

“We started hearing about the Coronavirus that was slowly spreading, and suddenly the pandemic started. Theaters, cinemas, museums, and art in general were the first things to come to a standstill, and eventually close. As Ai Weiwei says in one of his interviews in the film: “Suddenly it is like you build a home, and it collapses.” For a moment, art loses all its meaning and its power; art and the artists are challenged about their existence. Through all this, the documentary evolved, and became not only about Ai Weiwei’s creative process, but also asked the questions, ‘What is art? and ‘Why do we need it?” The production was back two years later, and of course everything had a very different taste. Putting this opera on stage was not merely opening a curtain, and playing music for a few hours, it was delivering a message of love, of freedom of expression and finally for artists being fighters, activists and symbols of these values, like all of Ai Weiwei’s works.” 

Watch Ai Weiwei’s Turandot on various platforms, including streaming services like MUBI, Fandango at Home, and Doc Edge Virtual Cinema, as well as through streaming for purchase or rental.