Review - Madama Butterfly - Opera Australia

Opening on Remembrance Day (11 November) this is the first of three operas featuring a hero from the armed forces. Written three years after the death of Verdi, Madama Butterfly is a remarkable achievement, a quantum leap from his previous opera that “shabby little shocker” Tosca, instead it reshapes the nature and form of Italian opera. By now a remarkable orchestrator Puccini’s score is obviously melodious but in equal measure the melody is responsive to the drama in a very modern way, shifting a long way from Verdi. The libretto’s origins as a stage play remain obvious, and Puccini seems confident and unconcerned about leaving conversational passages essential to the plot. Instead he accompanies them music that is equally conversational and constantly illuminating the importance of character and situation like a subtext that threads together the growing tragic themes and which gives the opera its power. At one point, in act two when Sharpless asks Butterfly what she would do if Pinkerton were never to return she is stunned, the orchestra play only a few stammering, unconnected chords matching her own speechlessness. When her father’s hara-kiri knife is first sighted the orchestra screeches a fateful motif that returns time and again, reminding the listener that, for Butterfly, honour is everything and without honour only death remains. Even before the lugubrious ‘humming chorus’ the theme emerges pointing toward the tragic outcome and that, although we see Butterfly, Suzuki and ‘Sorrow’ patiently waiting for the dawn and Pinkerton’s return, we are told musically the dawn will only bring death. Emerging out of this conversational music "Un bel di" seems obtrusive.

The conductor Shao-Chia-Lü relishes these orchestral felicities, highlighting one after another. The first hearing of the knife and death themes in act one, where Butterfly’s prattle about her worldly goods is interrupted by Pinkerton’s enquiry about the knife, the theme suddenly lurches out. Even in "Un bel di" he underlines its orchestral postlude, reminding us that the vocal part stops in musical mid-phrase and is continued and concluded by the orchestra - even managing to hold the traditional applause at bay until that phrase is complete.

Nicole Youl is at her best in the second and third acts. A century later it is dramatically more important to present the noble and honourable aspects of Butterfly’s character rather than just creating a believable 15-year-old. The impression of her in act one is of creating a Butterfly entering into the marriage in order to save that family honour and rescue her and her mother from destitution. When she is cursed by the Bonze and abandoned she similarly entrusts herself to Pinkerton for the sake of honour. Without resorting to overt melodrama she sighed, spoke and sobbed the part with equal attention to its musical and dramatic structure. In “Che tua madre dovrà” she faces the prospect of returning to her Geisha calling, this time, and like it was for her mother, with a child in tow, her despair at the prospect - again with that knife theme when she vows she would rather die -beginning a great arc of desperate emotions that carries through the rest of the act, right through to the end of the opera. With the conductor intent on merging the orchestral subtext with the stage action, to experience it this way is doubly overwhelming. Sally-Anne Russell blends well with Youl vocally as well as creating a sisterliness in the relationship rather than one of mistress and servant. Russell also manages the high-lying parts of Suzuki's music easily such as the 'flower duet' and "Piangerà tanto, tanto" just before her last scene with Butterfly.

Pinkerton could be considered little more than an unfeeling 'sex tourist.' I still recall from an earlier staging of this production when Butterfly revealed that was only fifteen. "Quindici anni!" says Sharpless looking hurriedly from her to Pinkerton. "Quindici anni" Pinkerton repeats, nodding his head while a revolting leer spread across his face. Rosario La Spina is less insightful. When Sharpless warns him that Butterfly is entering into this sham marriage in earnest and that Pinkerton may "plunge a trusting heart into despair" La Spina manages a derisive chuckle (then a sad face when Pinkerton and Sharpless assume the same positions in the third act when Sharpless tells him 'I told you so'). His singing is varied, "Dovunque al mondo", the closest to a conventional aria, is his most successful contribution but "Addio, fiorito asil" gets pulled away from the action to make an exit aria rather than be a culmination of the subtle trio and ensuing fluid ensemble that begins with Sharpless' "Io so che alle sue pene". In the act one love duet, one of the longest and most inspired Puccini wrote, La Spina's Pinkerton is sexually nonthreatening or urgent, his 'vieni, vieni' as he urges her to bed has no urgency but, in fairness, the dangerous sexuality of the scene is drained by Moffat Oxenbould's production which - as the house disappears and a night sky is revealed - turns into a pleasant nocturnal stroll. Oxenbould's stylised production to a certain extent dumbs down Puccini's ingenious score. Supernumeraries (with masks and gowns more appropriate to an operating rather than opera theatre) whisk on and off with the knife every time it is suggested rather than let its fearsome presence in the music speak for itself. Within the stylised designed the set numbers and dramatic flow, while occasionally interrupted by these 'supers', of act two and three still emerge very convincingly.

Madama Butterfly (Madame Butterfly) (1904, final performance version 1907) by Giacomo Puccini. Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa after the short story Madame Butterfly (1898) by John Luther Long as dramatised by David Belasco. Also based in part on the novel Madame Chrysanthème (1887) by Pierre Loti.
Conductor - Shao-Chia-Lü
Madama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) - Nicole Youl
Suzuki - Sally-Anne Russell
BF Pinkerton - Rosario La Spina
Sharpless - Barry Ryan
Goro - Graeme Macfarlane
Kate Pinkerton - Sian Pendry
Prince Yamadori - Luke Gabbedy (Andrew Moran 11 November)
Commissioner - Andrew Moran (Andrew Jones 11 November)
Registrar - Gregory Brown
Opera Australia Chorus
Orchestra Victoria
Director - Moffat Oxenbould
Set & Costume Designers - Peter England & Russell Cohen
Lighting Designer - Robert Bryan
11, 15, 19, 22, 26 & 29 November 4, 6, 9 & 13 December 2008
165 minutes (including 1 interval after act 1)

This is an expanded version of the review published in Melbourne's new arts, entertainment and lifestyle publication Canvas magazine