Like Gothamist, you're so into Hero right now, aren't you? You've taken to wearing monochromatic colored ensembles on different days of the week. (Tuesday felt like sea-foam green, didn't it?) You've been doodling "Flying Snow Hearts Broken Sword 4-Ever" on random scraps pieces of paper. You're obsessed. It's cool. We know how it goes.
Now you're wondering, where did Chinese director Zhang Yimou's operatic tendencies so stirringly evident in Hero come from? Perhaps a look at the documentary, the Turandot Project about his direction of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot outdoors inside Beijing's Forbidden City will give you a glimpse in. This is spectacle with a capital S, melding together the high culture Westerner Puccini's sweeping score in the penultimate Eastern space. Conducted by Zubin Mehta and also produced earlier that year in Florence, Italy, the documentary's director Allan Miller followed the production from inception and it's sure to be a fascinating making-of.
A screening of the film at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side tonight at 8 pm will be followed by a Q & A. Tickets cost $13 and is a part of the Mao to Mozart to Puccini to Perlman series. The Leonard Nimoy Thalia is at Broadway and 95th Street.
