John Relyea had just turned 28 when, 26 years ago, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut – sporting angel’s wings as the magical Alidoro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola and singing as if he fully deserved them. Since then, he’s been a frequent visitor to the company, in a wide variety of roles in six languages. He’s been absent for the past three seasons, and it was good to have him back in the closing weeks of 2025/26 in a new Met role for him, Timur in Puccini’s Turandot, in the classic Franco Zeffirelli staging that still, after nearly four decades, pops eyes and fills seats like no other production but the even older Zeffirelli La bohème.
Timur isn’t a long role, or a flashy one, but in good hands it can make a powerful effect, and Relyea’s were notably capable. His commanding bass-baritone and equally commanding presence made it clear from the start that the blind and deposed Timur still has the bearing of a king, and his lamentation over the dead Liù did eloquent, plaintive justice to the last music Puccini ever wrote. It touched me in a way her actual death scene hadn’t.
That was the doing of Angel Blue, the single weakish link in an otherwise excellent cast. In recent seasons, she seemed to have lost easy access to her topmost notes, all of which were approached with audible caution at this performance. It’s still, basically, a first-class voice, but the promise of a decade ago just hasn’t been kept. Her colleagues, though, made this a rousing show. Young bass-baritone Ben Brady, a Met debutant this season, opened it with fine command as the Mandarin; Joo Won Kang, Tony Stevenson and Andrew Stenson were in fine sync as Ping, Pang and Pong; and veteran character tenor Carlo Bosi brought his ever-welcome presence to feeble Emperor Altoum.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Tichler – Met Opera
Brian Jagde as Calaf and Anna Pirozzi as Turandot at the Met
Brian Jagde had one of his best nights as Calaf, his tenor ringing out excitingly on top but scaling down tenderly for a remarkably moving melting of the imperious ice princess – the only time, I think, I’ve ever teared up at that tricky scene. For her part in that feat, Anna Pirozzi – the Met’s very first native Italian Turandot and notably warm of temperament – deserves her share of the credit. Hers isn’t the biggest soprano voice to tackle the taxing role, but it’s a handsome one, with its very Italianate timbre and vibrato, and it blazes cuttingly on top. She and Jagde wholly merited their clamorous ovations.
I happily joined in the applause, but (breaking a self-imposed rule not to cheer at a performance I’m reviewing) I couldn’t help flinging a pair of bellowed “Brava!”s at the woman who held it all together: Ukrainian maestra Oksana Lyniv, who led what seemed in its unfolding an ideal account of Puccini’s multi-marvelous score – propulsive, full of unfussy detail, loud when it needed to be but never at the singers’ expense. She’s the real deal, and though Turandot is the only opera she’s conducted in New York so far (Tosca awaits her in the fall), here’s wishing her a Met career as long and as varied as Relyea’s.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Tichler – Met Opera
Brian Jagde “had one of his best nights as Calaf” in the Met’s Turandot
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