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MADAMA BUTTERFLY
Review

MADAMA BUTTERFLY

March 23 2014

MADAMA BUTTERFLY, Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, Opera Australia, March 21-April 12 2014. (The performances on April 1 and 3 will be filmed for DVD and cinema release.) Photography by James Morgan: above - Butterfly arrives. Right: Suzuki and Butterfly.

The third annual outdoor adventure for Opera Australia and Dr Haruhisa Handa is another winner. In the hands of director Alex Ollè of La Fura dels Bals, with set designer Alfons Flores, costume designer Lluc Castells and lighting designer Alexander Koppelmann, the crowd-pleasing Puccini classic Madama Butterfly is powerfully reborn.

The standard was set with 2012's La Traviata - when designer Brian Thomson solved the overarching problem of achieving the vital link between the intimate and the spectacular with the giant chandelier. That visual coup successfully linked the vast expanse of sky and harbour cityscape with the tiny human tragedy of Emma Matthews' exquisite Violetta. It proved that - no matter what naysayers thought - this way of presenting opera could not only work but also be transcendent art and entertainment.

This time the Spanish artists are the first foreigners to tackle the challenge of Mrs Macquarie's Chair and Ollè and Flores have taken a different approach. Nevertheless, the outcome is the same: the unique Sydney setting neither overwhelms nor detracts from the opera. In this instance - because of Puccini's original setting of Nagasaki harbour - the design, the story and the surrounds actually come together in the most amazing yet natural way!

The evening opens with a white-overalled labourer marking out the floor plan for a house with a chalk gun on a gently sloping, green hillside. It's a desirable site to build a love nest - overlooking the harbour and sheltered from the west by a hillock topped by a copse of tall bamboo. Soon, guests gather for a ceremony. There are elegant tables decorated with lavish floral arrangements, champagne and canapes; rows of white plastic chairs, an aisle of red carpet and a backdrop of flimsy red banners - on opening night, flying out on the horizontal in a stiff southerly breeze!

No longer a naval lieutenant, young American entrepreneur and property developer, F.B. Pinkerton (Georgy Vasilev), is preparing to "marry" his even younger paramour, Cio-Cio San - Butterfly (Hiromi Omura). The nuptials are designed to appease and deceive both cultures. In this production, with the Americans in tropical-weight suits and the Japanese in authentic - rather than Western imaginings of the Mysterious Orient - Pinkerton's quickly revealed cynicism is to the fore in a way that's rarely been portrayed so clearly. He wants the girl and will do what he must to get her; but a future "real" American wife is always in the back of his mind.

Pinkerton's friend, the Consul, Sharpless (Michael Honeyman) understands exactly what is going on and does what he can to dissuade. That there will be tears - and worse - before sundown he is sure, but his efforts are for nought. Cio-Cio San's maid and confidant Suzuki (Anna Yun) is also dubious but is faithful and sticks close to her mistress.

The celebrations are disrupted by the sudden arrival of a bunch of Yakuza-like young thugs and The Bonze (Gennadi Dubinsky). They've heard that the bride, thinking to please him, has taken up Pinkerton's Christian religion and turned her back on Shinto. Her family and the locals are outraged - she is instantly disowned. It's a classic colonial-imperialist moment somehow made all the more stark by this modern setting of the story.

When Pinkerton's ship (the Abraham Lincoln of course) inevitably sails away, he leaves Butterfly and Suzuki in a half-built dwelling in an incomplete apartment development. Their rent and living expenses are paid via Sharpless and Butterfly settles down to wait with boundless trust and optimism. Years pass, the bamboo and lush grass have gone - cut down and destroyed by the needs of the development. The house is a mess of partial walls and bits of timber and tin; an aluminium ladder instead of a staircase leads to the non-existent upper floor, some miserable shrubs in pots line the veranda.

Rugged up and forlorn, Butterfly spends the nights gazing out to sea And although the Manly ferry hoves into view, the Abraham Lincoln does not. Goro the marriage broker (Graeme Macfarlane) tries to do a deal for Prince Yamadori (Sitiveni Talei) but Butterfly will have none of it. Her "husband" will return and now she has a beautiful son - with bronze-brown hair - to keep him by her side. That's not how dominant cultures work, however, and tragedy arrives in a Sydney taxi cab bearing Pinkerton and his wife Kate (Celeste Lazarenko).

MADAMA BUTTERFLY

Madama Butterfly is as simple or complex as the viewer chooses. This production delivers a richly stirring spectacle of music and drama that would be difficult to surpass. The performances are superb, beginning with one of the finest realisations of Cio-Cio San ever seen and heard in Sydney. Hiromi Omura is a fine actress and an even finer soprano. Her voice is powerful, true and flexible, delivering all the emotions and tones of innocent girlhood through to the grieving and abandoned young woman of the finale.

The detail in Omura's acting performance is breathtaking. In the beginning, for instance, she is the archetypal Oriental, simpering and fluttering and pathetically pigeon-toed as she shuffles demurely towards Pinkerton. This is a girl who has been schooled to dutifully abase herself to please her master. Three years and a child and much loneliness later, she has abandoned those cultural norms for a Stars and Stripes tank top, denim cut-offs and the sturdy, stair-leaping stride of an athletic Western chick. It's an astonishing transformation.

Pinkerton as a property developer and chancer is the pivotal dramatic transformation. Georgy Vasilev, in his smart but slightly too tight suits and slick hair, must have seemed familiar to some of the state and federal grandees in the opening night audience. Like so many of them, his honeyed voice disguises his underlying motives - even as he accompanies Butterfly in a glorious duet against a moon that one of his own cranes raises to order. That beautiful moon prop also blocks from the audience's sight the view across the cove towards Millers Point, the remnant enclave of the poor and ordinary that is about to be evicted. Bitter irony!

The meagre forces of decency are represented by Michael Honeyman as an unusually central and nuanced Sharpless. Often little more than an item of furniture in the way of the tenor, Honeyman's performance is revelatory and memorable. Suzuki too, takes a crucial place as the metaphor for Butterfly's fate. Anna Yun is tightly focused on her position and personal journey and, like Honeyman, her performance adds crucial dramatic and vocal dimensions.

The final spectacularly clever decision in a night of dazzling musical and dramatic decisions is the way the "Humming Chorus" is realised - as a straggling, sad parade of beaten humanity. They appear in silhouette over the hill and pass in front of the audience, carrying pitiful bundles of belongings and struggling with unknown grief and palpable exhaustion. Are they survivors of war? Have they come from Millers Point or Fukushima? Who knows, they are unable to speak - their communication is reduced to that beautiful, wordless theme. Brilliant.

Brilliant too in these circumstances are the precision and heart of the chorus and orchestra, under the baton of Brian Castles-Onion. It has to be one of the more peculiar gigs for the musicians - deep in the bowels of the pontoon, unseen and unseeing - and the conductor succeeds in uniting the singers and orchestra in a heartfelt and true rendering of the score, it's a mighty task and their appearance at the curtain call is worth the ovation that greets them.

One quibble, however, is the volume of the sound mix. In previous years the balance of the amplified voices has been subtle and kinder. It is ridiculous that Butterfly and Pinkerton, for instance, should be miked like Celine Dion and Robbie Williams. We know from La Traviata, in particular, that the individual voices can and should sound much as they do in the Opera House. Just because many in the audiences - it is hoped - will be more accustomed to a rock concert than an opera is not reason enough to detract from an otherwise sublime production.

In the end, however, with the sun setting, flying foxes squeaking in the fig trees and Eamon D'Arcy's various levels of bars, eateries and sitting areas to choose from before the performance; and then one of the great operas to enjoy in a wondrous realisation, it would take a concerted effort of ill-will not to have a marvellous evening of music and drama. By the end of this one, many in the audience were reaching for tissues as Butterfly's story is played out to its tragic end. And let's hope this isn't the end of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour - it has proved itself to be a popular and artistic triumph and these days we need that as a reminder to keep reaching for the stars.

 

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