Having raised up the Castel Sant’Angelo from the depths of the Metropolitan Opera in Tosca and put half of Paris onstage for La Boheme, Franco Zeffirelli must have felt some pressure to top himself with his new production of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot. Curious first-nighters, proud holders of the toughest opera ticket of the season, entered the Met last week wondering how far the director’s passion for outsize verisimilitude would extend. Would he cut off the Prince of Persia’s head and stick it on a pole? Build the Great Wall of China? Or (gasp!) actually respect the libretto and provide a tasteful pageant that would suit the lush, exotic music without overwhelming it?

The answer, as it happens, is none of the above. No one, however, has asked for a refund, for Zeffirelli’s vision is as vivid as ever. In addition to Soprano Eva Marton as Princess Turandot, Tenor Placido Domingo as Calaf, her suitor, and the other principals, there are 286 singers and supernumeraries. By comparison, Zeffirelli’s Boheme at its most gargantuan fielded a cast of merely 280. Much of the Turandot scenery was shipped from Italy in eleven cargo containers, each 40 ft. long. There are 300 costumes, and the headgear alone uses 44 lbs. of pearls, golf balls, chandelier crystals, Ping-Pong balls, espresso coffee filters and rosary beads. Depending on one’s perspective, the production is a monument to either glorious or wretched excess.

Consider: the first act, which the libretto says should take place before the walls of the Imperial Palace in Peking, is set instead in a realistic city of huddled rooftops that stretch away into the distance. Strutting mandarins, bald monks and muscled executioners lord it over a teeming, gray-clad, downtrodden citizenry. The bloodthirsty Turandot’s entrance is made aboard a golden, curtained pleasure pavilion that rises above the city like a ghostly apparition.

But it is Act II that really provides the bang for the buck. Zeffirelli and Costume Designer Dada Saligeri offer a regal gold and mother-of-pearl panoply: high atop a throne in the far reaches of the cavernous stage perches the black-clad, thousand-year-old Emperor (Swiss Tenor Hugues Cuenod, making his company debut at 84). For the first time the Met stage, which has swallowed whole such formidable productions as Nathaniel Merrill’s 1966 Die Frau ohne Schatten, looks cramped. As is its custom, the Met declines to reveal the spectacle’s cost, but best guesses run to about $1.5 million.

Extravaganzas like this are what give opera both a good and a bad name. Even though the music drama ought to be the focus of attention, there has always been a fascination with sets, props and costumes. At a conservative museum like the Met, which has not presented a world premiere since Marvin David Levy’s Mourning Becomes Electra in 1967, creativity is necessarily channeled into design. More is more, and the flamboyant Zeffirelli is a perfect symbol of the times. His Turandot works, in part because the fantastic nature of the opera can accommodate his cinematic, cast-of-thousands treatment. But it is close.

The problem comes when the line is crossed between splendor and risibility. The troublesome answers to Turandot’s three riddles are contained in pennants attached to the back of her gleaming aqua dress; as Calaf gives the correct ; answers, her minions unfurl the flags. Too tricky by far, and the opening night audience just laughed. Further, the cast spent much of the performance looking down at its collective feet so as not to stumble across the treacherous obstacle course of risers and steps. As a result, Marton, born for the title role, was oddly tentative, the sturdy Domingo seemed distracted and ill at ease, while Soprano Leona Mitchell’s hey-look-me-over Liu was too aggressive. Only Cuenod’s crotchety Emperor — a Swiss singing Italian the way he imagines a Chinese might — hit the mark. James Levine conducted grandly, and the powerful choruses were declaimed lustily if not suavely.

Tickets for Turandot being harder to come by than those for Les Miserables, most fans must wait for the TV broadcast next season. As for Zeffirelli, he tackles Aida in 1988-89. An anxious opera world awaits the reconstruction of the pyramids.

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