21 March/22 March 2020 ★ FTWeekend 15
Arts
T
he world has learnt to
expect the unexpected
from Ai Weiwei. Even so,
few could have predicted
his latest move. Ai is slated
todirectPuccini’sTurandot ttheTeatroa
dell’Opera in Rome, and, on day two of
rehearsals that have been abruptly
halted by the theatre’s closure, even the
artist seems incredulous. “I never
thought I would do anything like
opera,”Aisays.“Itreallyisanunthinka-
blesituation.”
His interest in the opera began with
an unlikely early encounter. Living in
New York in the 1980s, Ai did various
odd jobs to survive. “My friend Chiang
Ching was doing the choreography for
Zeffirelli’s production ofTurandot t thea
Met. She invited me to audition as an
extra, and my brother and I were cast as
the executioner’s assistants,” he
explains. Ai shows me a video clip in
which the duo are seen sharpening an
axe, and his eyes mist over with nostal-
gia. In a further blast from the past,
Chiang has been brought in to choreo-
graphtheRomeproduction.
China’s best-known living artist, Ai
has turned his hand to installation,
sculpture, film, blogs, poetry, YouTube,
performance and more. Recently, he
has created passionate projects around
therefugeecrisis,andisvocalinhissup-
port for the Hong Kong protests.
Whether dropping a 2,000-year-old
ceremonial urn or celebrating the
destruction of his Shanghai studio by
the authorities, much of his work is
boldlyperformative.
Opera,however,isnothometerritory.
Recalling the five years he lived in the
Gobi desert following the exile of his
father, one of China’s foremost poets,
during the Cultural Revolution, he says:
“There was no electricity and no
recordedmusic.Actually.”Anthems of revolution
Ai Weiwei The frequently|
controversial artist has made
a surprise move into opera
— and offended some of his
Italian hosts. ByJames Imam
Ai Weiwei in his
studio in Berlin
Wolfgang Stahr/laif/
Camera Pressoned for 81 days following open criti-
cism of the regime. It is as if he has been
seeking an alternative antagonist since
then. He chose Germany as a place of
exile from China, and after five years
there he relocated to the UK last
autumn, outraging his former hosts by
describing them as intolerant, and criti-
cising his new ones for failing to support
Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters.
Meanwhile, he seems to have been
experiencing a creative crisis. In an
interview in January, he admitted to
feelingtired,suffocatedbyprivilegeand
thinkingaboutgivingupart.
ButTurandot “the most complex—
project I’ve ever done”, Ai says — has
revitalised the artist. “I’ve really startedfrom zero, which is what makes it inter-
esting. During my personal develop-
ment, the most stimulating moments
have been when I have had unthinkable
obstacles. Those are the moments that
benefitmyintellect.”
Over the course of a year, he searched
for contemporary parallels in both the
early20th-centurylibrettoandtheorig-
inal Persian texts on which the story is
based.Theresultwillbeagrandmedita-
tion on authority and resistance, in
which Turandot, the beautiful Chinese
princess who will only marry a suitor
who can answer three secret riddles,
represents the establishment, and the
Tartar prince Calaf appears as a refugee
fightingforrecognition.Ai has been dazzled by the expressive
potential of opera. “The stage is like the
world,” he says, inverting the Shake-
speareanaphorism.“Itisverysmall,but
itcanreflectthewholeuniverse.There’s
the sound, the lighting, the acting and
the mood — so many elements to
expressthehumancondition.”
With its brutal monarch and baying
crowds,Turandot s a fitting conduit fori
Ai’s political views. There will be con-
temporary references (including to
coronavirus) and allusions to Ai’s own
art (such as orange life-jackets and
images of the middle finger he has pho-
tographed in front of objects of his deri-
sion). Following on from his films
depicting the plight of refugees world-
wide, Ai has sent a team to shoot a docu-
mentaryontheHongKongproteststhat
will be shown as a backdrop toTuran-
dot’s most famous aria “Nessun Dorma”
(“Nobody Sleeps”), recasting it as a
revolutionaryhymn.
In Rome, whose decision was it to
enrol the unpredictable Ai? As the
Opera seeks to raise its profile and
reduce debts of around €45m, Carlo
Fuortes, the superintendent, hasfavoured occasional blockbuster
projects. These include film director
Sofia Coppola’s 2016 production of aL
traviata hich cost €1m — the samew
amount will be spent on Ai’s production
— and has generated almost four times
as much in box-office sales. Fuortes,
who was impressed with the artist’s
2016 retrospective at Florence’s Palazzo
Strozzi, asked Ai to create the sceno-
graphy forTurandot. It was Ai himself
who raised the stakes, proposing that he
alsodirecttheproduction.
When the opera finally comes to the
stage, Ai looks forward to challenging
audiences in Italy, a nation that closed
itsportstomigrantrescueshipsin2018.
“They may not like it, they may turn
away. But I have to do my duty, I have to
defendmyvalues,”hesays.
Does he plan to direct further stage
works? “I don’t think so, because I last
encounteredTurandot 3 years ago,” he 3
says with a grin. “We will have to wait
anotherthreedecades.”‘The most stimulating
moments [in my career]
have been when I have hadunthinkable obstacles’
The coronavirus crisis has led to some
rescheduling. When Italy shuttered its
theatres earlier this month, the produc-
tion was postponed until next March.
Ai’s reaction caught many off guard.
“Coronavirus is like pasta: the Chinese
inventedit,buttheItalianswillspreadit
all over the world,” he posted on Insta-
gram. Lapo Elkann, scion of the Fiat car
dynasty, described the comment as “an
offence to those who are suffering”,
while film director Paolo Sorrentino
called for a boycott of Ai’s work. It was a
small taste of what other countries that
have hosted the dissident artist have
experienced.
Ai returned to China from New York
in 1993, and 18 years later was impris-MARCH 21 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 3/202019/ - 17:20 User:paul.gould Page Name:WKD15, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 15, 1