Madama Butterfly at the Sydney Opera House, by Andrew Miller

Cio-cio-san
Cio-Cio-San (Patricia Racette) enters in Act I. Photo: Branco Gaica.

Madama Butterfly
Music by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 17 January 2011
continues in Sydney until 3 March

Director - Moffatt Oxenbould
Set and Costume Designers - Peter England and Russell Cohen
Lighting Designer - Robert Bryan

Cio-Cio-San - Patricia Racette
Pinkerton - David Corcoran
Suzuki - Jacqueline Dark
Sharpless - Barry Ryan
Goro - Graeme Macfarlane
Kate - Jane Parkin
The Bonze - Jud Arthur
Yamadori - Samuel Dundas
The Imperial Commissioner - Sam Roberts-Smith
The Official Registrar - Gregory Brown

Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
Conductor - Massimo Zanetti
Opera Australia Chorus

One could say that Madama Butterfly is a distilled and simplified presentation of the stereotypical opera plot. It is a romance told very straight with spurning, madness leading to the female lead's suicide with good songs and a bit of exoticism, but it lacks the twists in the plot which Mozart's operas have (at least Donna Elvira tries to chase down Don Giovanni) to deepen the characters' relationships. This leaves all the characterization to the music and I don't think Puccini's is up to it. Cio-Cio-San is too pathetic and doormat-ish and it's hard to feel into her character when the music doesn't sink deeply enough into the listener to help them understand her or link her into the greater universe. Perhaps that is unfair to the music since the libretto and story itself doesn't give much to go on to divine her motivations, but Puccini did choose the story. Pinkerton too isn't exactly 4-dimensional. He is a cad with neither redeeming qualities, magnetism nor charm. Having said that, the opera can be enjoyable at some level if, as in this case, the music is well played and sung, making the more dragging parts of Act II bearable, though this enjoyment was marred by a certain noisy leading tenor.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller