The Royal Opera House’s Turandot has now been running so long it feels less like a revival and more like a listed structure. You don’t attend it so much as pass through it, like a familiar corridor or ...

Puccini’s Turandot, with its combination of myth, ritual and emotional extremity, suits dark evenings and the build-up to Christmas, when audiences seem especially ready for spectacle and intensity.

Were operas to be identified like episodes of Friends, Turandot would be “the one with Nessun Dorma”. This beloved tenor aria has achieved a life of its own away from its parent opera. Consequently, ...