Film "My 'Turandot' will be different": Ai Weiwei on his opera production
He doesn't really like operas, says Chinese artist Ai Weiwei to the camera. But he did stage one at the opera house in Rome, Puccini's "Turandot". The documentary film "Ai Weiwei's Turandot" retraces the production process.
13.11.2025, 06:30
SDA
The opera itself only plays a minor role in Maxim Derevianko's film. Instead, the focus is on Ai Weiwei's efforts to bring Giacomo Puccini's cruel Chinese fairy tale with the man-killing princess to the stage as a "perfect story" about the "beauty and cruelty" of the Chinese empire today.
And the film is a declaration of love to the power of theater and to the many dedicated professionals it unites. "Art is something that transforms," says Ai Weiwei. And obviously also something that spans arcs. We learn, for example, that Ai Weiwei was hired as an extra for Franco Zeffirelli's production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York 33 years ago because of his "oriental appearance".
In front of the assembled ensemble of the opera house, he announces that he enjoys doing what he is not good at. This statement is, of course, pure understatement. Because the documentary clearly shows one thing: when Ai Weiwei tackles something, he does it properly. For example, he challenges the theater's workshops to a great extent: a huge stepped 3D world map has to be created as a stage set, and the tailoring department has to implement many symbolic and extravagant designs for the ensemble's costumes.
The big shutdown
The film follows the development of the politically charged stage spectacle until the big coronavirus shutdown in 2020. It is a different kind of shutdown, as Ai Weiwei experienced several times in his home country of China, when the police arrested him and later razed his studio to the ground, as the film shows in inserts.
But the corona crisis passed, rehearsals resumed - and were not interrupted after another catastrophe: the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, which not only shook the conductor Oksana Lyniv, who comes from the attacked country.
The show must go on until the celebrated premiere. This marks the end of the documentary film, underscored by Ai Weiwei's remark: "Art competes with reality, and art will have the last word."
"Ai Weiwei's Turandot" can be seen in Swiss-German cinemas from today, Thursday.
