""Thirty-three years ago, I was working as an extra in Zeffirelli's Metropolitan Turandot,""
""I don't care about opera. I don't listen to music when I work.""
""It is the vision of an Italian intellectual, Giacomo Puccini, of a distant country. Obviously, it was a simple sketch vision that the West had of the East. So I thought about which artist could really embody the new relationship between Western and Eastern worlds.""
Ai Weiwei introduced himself to the Rome Opera cast and recalled working as an extra in Franco Zeffirelli's Metropolitan Turandot thirty-three years earlier when he was a poor artist in Manhattan. In 2018, Ai was invited to direct Puccini's Turandot at Rome Opera. Rome Opera has a history of commissioning visual artists for productions. The opportunity allowed Ai to reshape an Orientalist portrayal of a Chinese princess through his visual aesthetics and contemporary political perspective. Ai does not ordinarily work in theatre and stated that he does not care about opera or listen to music while working. Carlo Fuortes sought an artist to embody a new East–West relationship.
Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
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