Madame Butterfly
New Theatre, Oxford
Opera fans in Oxford are well used to the excellent touring productions offered by the Welsh National Opera. However, there was at least one major surprise in store when the curtain rose on this production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, which tells the story of American naval officer BF Pinkerton’s marriage to and subsequent abandonment of 15-year-old Geisha Cio-Cio-San or “Butterfly”.
Here, Pinkerton, whose name is suggestive of a fleshy white American, is handsomely portrayed by tenor Russell Thomas, who is black. This casting cannily circumvents much of the original opera’s unappealing racist undertones, while allowing the audience to enjoy Thomas’ fine singing.
Puccini scored Madame Butterfly no less than three times and this production seamlessly incorporates material from all three versions in a score in which the musicians lead the drama in a very real sense. The excellent WNO orchestra, enlivened by some exotic percussion and particularly fine horns, was conducted with assurance by Simon Phillippo. There was no histrionic maestro bravura posturing here. Phillippo’s style was spare yet completely convincing. The control of the rubato in the humming chorus which closes Act One was remarkable, with the string pizzicati and staccato flutes magical.
As Butterfly, who rarely leaves the stage, Judith Howarth sustained vocal and emotional energy throughout. The Act One love duet “Viene la Sera”, along with “Un bel Di” (one of two arias Howarth had to deliver while kneeling), were sung with considerable beauty.
Claire Bradshaw’s Suzuki, handmaiden to Butterfly, was perfectly judged with subtle acting and fine singing – never more so than in the ravishing Act One flower duet, as the women prepare to welcome home Lieutenant Pinkerton, who has been absent for three whole years, during which Butterfly has been left alone to raise their son.
As Butterfly sang to American Consul Sharpless, (a modest Neal Davies) of her “golden haired, blue eyed child”, there were audible sniggers in the auditorium. Even in the hyper-fantastical reality of opera, the child on show could never be the product of this evening’s protagonists.
It is for his son that Pinkerton and Kate, his new, “official” American wife, have returned. Finally and after the requisite agonies are undergone on both sides, Butterfly agrees to give up her child to Pinkerton and “the blonde lady who frightens her so”. It is an act of supreme sacrifice that demands Butterfly pays the ultimate price. After blindfolding her son and singing her last note, Butterfly takes the dagger given to her father by the Mikado and plunges it into her breast. It is left to Sharpless to force Pinkerton to survey the wreckage he has wrought.
Madame Butterfly is essentially a domestic opera and the action is dominated by the house bought by Pinkerton for his new bride.
In this production, the house, somewhat reminiscent of the Japanese-inspired shop fronts favoured by Habitat in the 1980s, sits beneath a profusion of sepia-coloured cherry blossom and essentially consists of a series of sliding screens operated by the cast.
In fact the entire production is sepia in tone, never knowingly over-Orientalised, apart from its single low point. When Butterfly made her first entrance surrounded by a females chorus, it was impossible for me not to recall every single amateur Mikado I have seen. But this should not detract in from a splendid production of a much-loved opera classic. l
Cary Gee
The WNO’s Madame Butterfly is on tour until November 28
