Opera review: Madama Butterfly

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This was published 10 years ago

Opera review: Madama Butterfly

By Reviewed by Peter McCallum

Opera Australia
Mrs Macquarie's Point
March 21

Finding your seats, you are faced with a large artificial grass hill for a stage not unlike the one you would be sitting on were it not for the terraced seats, restaurants and temporary toilets that have been constructed to turn Mrs Macquarie's Point into a modern operatic pleasure garden.

Victoria Lambourn and Anna Yun.

Victoria Lambourn and Anna Yun.Credit: Ben Rushton

But even before the music starts a surveyor is subdividing paradise for the Pinkerton Development Company, and when, in the first act servants start laying out a picnic very much like the one that we, the audience, have hastily grabbed between work and entertainment, it becomes clear that this telling of Puccini’s story of rapaciousness and fragility is about us.

As we appropriate Farm Cove for our diversion and another harbour site becomes a casino, the message is disconcertingly clear. We bind a beautiful world until the beauty is extinguished. In both meeting and contesting the expectations of outdoor spectacle – fireworks, boats, gorgeous images - the production walks a delicate line.

Alex Olle and La Fura dels Baus have produced the strongest of the three Handa Operas on Sydney Harbour, mixing challenging ideas and haunting images while making cogent use of the large space to create powerful drama.

Olle not only gives contemporary pertinence to a classic usually cocooned from relevance, but, through attention to detail, animates telling moments - Sharpless's sudden shock at hearing Pinkerton rhapsodise about his future "true American bride" in Act I, and the brutal agony of child separation at the end.

As for the singing much of it is superb, with outstanding principals, though it was somewhat marred on opening night by over-boosted and distorting amplification (this was ironically apt, given the message, but presumably unintended).

Hiromi Omura sings Cio-Cio-San with peerless bony strength and smoothness and a focused sound that cuts thrillingly through the night air (and would do more so if the amplification followed her lead instead of airbrushing and boosting). Georgy Vasiliev sings Pinkerton, a "neoliberal tsunami" in Olle’s view, with the easy freedom and strength that Cio-Cio-San admire in him, covering the sound with a richly coloured bloom particularly in the mid and upper range.

Michael Honeyman as Sharpless the Consul whose warnings Pinkerton ignores found a highly attractive golden quality in the second act, though the first act took a moment to settle. As the maid Suzuki, Anna Yun, matched Omura’s sound and temperament with finesse and humble grace, while as the despised marriage broker, Goro, Graeme McFarlane needled and sang with insistent focus.

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The invasion of the wedding in Act I by Cio-Cio-San’s uncle, the Bonze, threatened nasty and meaningless violence as an impotent reaction to Pinkerton’s rapacity, and Gennadi Dubinsky created the part as a raspingly calculating gang leader.

Sitiveni Talei managed to portray Prince Yamadori, the spurned lover, suavely and without stereotype. Although the orchestral sound lacked the tonal finesse achieved in the first Handa production, La Traviata, conductor, Brian Castles-Onion paced the work with deft skill.

In Act I, the chorus was vital and engaging while during the delicate simplicity of the humming chorus of Act II, actors portraying the homeless were evicted from Pinkerton’s harbour-front extravaganza, not to the twinkling not of stars but the torches of security guards. Sound familiar?

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