Madama Butterfly
Fine Singing Framed by Flowers
Madama Butterfly
by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Guiseppe Giacosa
Sembla and Opera International for Ellen Kent Productions with the Ukranian Opera and Ballet Theatre Kyiv at Richmond Theatre 26thMarch and on tour until 14thMay
Review by Patrick Shorrock
With the Arts Council cutting grants to opera companies left, right, and centre, a big thank you to Ellen Kent Productions for trying to fill the gap. This production of Madama Butterfly is conventional and decorative rather than probing or radical, but has two very fine singers in the lead. There is no doubting that this is an increasingly strange piece nowadays. In some ways it is all about the clash of cultures – young Geisha, Butterfly wants a permanent American marriage while Naval Lt Pinkerton is after a temporary Japanese one, as he has a bride waiting for him at home. Whilst its critique of American imperialism – Pinkerton has very little by way of redeeming features – is quite effective, it views Japanese culture through an Italian orientalist lens that appropriates and prettifies and arguably blurs the contrast between American and Japanese
The pretty kimonos and attractive set – a garden full of flowers in front of a Japanese house of screens – fit nicely on the Richmond Theatre stage. But there is no change between Act 1 and Act 2 to mark the changed circumstances of Butterfly, who has been abandoned by the American husband she married three years ago. The direction is efficient. but there is nothing very illuminating or moving, when this opera should leave you emotionally devastated.
We do have a couple of impressive singers in Korean Elena Dee as Butterfly and Armenian Hovhannes Andreasyan as Pinkerton. Dee is ideal for Puccini as she has both sweetness and power, with no fluttering or curdling in the voice, although she is somewhat anonymous and some of her gestures seem generically operatic rather than authentically Japanese. Andreasyan has a fine voice with a lovely tenor bloom and used it with impressive musical taste. Although he was booed by some at his curtain call, this was all about the character not the singer: cocky insensitive Americans are not exactly flavour of the month in Europe at the moment.
The orchestra of generally young players played with impressive exactness, although the sound of the strings wasn’t exactly plush. Vasyl Vasylenko’s conducting lacked urgency, passion, and momentum: this was possibly the longest Un Bel Di that I have heard. For some reason, there was no humming in the humming chorus. This wasn’t disastrous, but the fake amplified birdsong, superimposed over the orchestra that followed it, presumably an allusion to the robins whose nesting marks the point at which Pinkerton has promised to return, was vile. The lack of a pit was not too much of a problem, although the percussion drowned the singers from time to time. Smaller parts were impressively taken, particularly Yelyzaveta Bielous’s Suzuki.
At the end, we all stood up for the Ukranian National Anthem, which felt like the least we could do.
Patrick Shorrock, March 2025
Photography courtesy of Sembla
Mark Aspen 