22, 27 & 29 Dec 2008

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9DD; Box Office: 020 7304 4000
Tickets: £8-£190

All performances at 19.30, except Saturday 27 December at 19.00
The Ice Princess returns this Season with her hot-blooded Prince once more ready to challenge, thaw and win her. Turandot is one of the most famously spectacular productions of The Royal Opera, evoking in Andrei Serban’s now-classic staging the pageantry, colour and savagery of ancient China that forms the setting for Puccini’s great and final opera.

It is an oriental fairytale of disguised identities, riddles, ritual executions and – of course – powerful, triumphant love. Besides its great tenor aria ‘Nessun dorma’, the music ranges from the exotic and portentous as the moon rises at the start, through the grandeur and mysticism of Turandot’s riddles, to the tragic beauty of the servant girl Liu’s appeals to and final sacrifice for her beloved master, Prince Calaf.

Details on www.roh.org.uk .