All opera demands a suspension of disbelief and a willingness to let oneself be carried into a very different world. Sometimes it is suggested that this world was at some stage in the past more real than it is now.
Madama Butterfly is fine example of the way in which this was never so. There is no reason so suppose a pair of 19th century male Italian librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa had a good cultural feel for a Japanese woman abandoned by her faithless American husband and they made Cio-Cio San as more placid and doll-like in a way which grates on today’s audiences.
But the truth of unrequited love is not lesser for this lack of realism. Madama Butterfly is the story of a woman who loves what she cannot have – first a man to whom she is just an exotic plaything and then his child, whom she finally gives up in what is ultimately the much more painful act of sacrifice.
Puccini’s soulful music brings a psychological truth to this longing that has ensured the opera a great favourite in the repertoire. In this production, conductor Guillaume Tourniare brings out the fine sweeps of the score with a superb lyricism and the music shines.
Moffatt Oxenbould’s production is a beautiful and elegant work with the simplicity of Japanese style. Set designers Peter England and Russell Cohen have designed a lovely set of sliding panels, water and walkways enhanced with some gorgeous use of petals.
There is a jarring note in the mummy-like spirit figures – half ghost/half servant – who seem too surreal to fit in this otherwise gentle and carefully wrought production but otherwise the opera is delightful to look at and to listen to.
The same cannot be said for dramatic impact. On stage, the production lacked emotionality s​o that it sometimes felt as if we were watching masked ritual not the loves and losses of a flesh and blood woman.
​Japanese soprano Hiromi Omura is a fine and deeply musical Cio-Cio San who give us soaring arias and great control but little sense of a real woman. Sian Pendry as Cio-Cio San’s maid Suzuki gave a much more heartfelt performance and was the dramatic success of the opera.
James Egglestone was a suitably callous Pinkerton, looking, moving and singing beautifully but again dramatically shallow and again it was his second, Michael Honeyman as the consul Sharpless, who wrung more emotion out of his role.
This is a beautiful production, both visually and musically, but it feels more like walking around a gallery with a marvellous audio track than the full-blown experience of opera.
Madama Butterfly
Opera Australia
Arts Centre Melbourne
May 4 -30
Tickets
