The life cycle of a butterfly involves metamorphosis. So too David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, which emerged from its chrysalis in 1988 as a hit Broadway play paralleling Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly. Hwang then wrote a screenplay for David Cronenberg’s 1993 film, starring Jeremy Irons, and has now written the libretto for an opera by Chinese composer Huang Ruo which premiered at Santa Fe Opera in 2022 and fluttered across The Pond for its UK premiere, presented by the Barbican and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
The plot is based on the 1986 espionage trial of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot (here renamed René Gallimard), an envoy at the French Embassy in Beijing, who in the 1960s became ensnared in a honeytrap. Bouriscot fell in love with Peking opera star Shi Pei Pu (Song Liling), unaware during their 20-year affair that “she” was really a man who was working as a spy for the Chinese government.
The story has parallels with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly – Huang Ruo’s score is even published by Casa Ricordi – with its overtones of imperialism, but author and composer turn that familiar opera on its head in an exposé of race, gender and empire. “It’s one of your favourite fantasies,” Song tells Gallimard after he has been enchanted by her performance of Butterfly’s “Un bel dì” at an embassy party. “The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man.” What if the roles were reversed, she asks. Here it is the Westerner, thinking he has found the perfect woman, alluring and submissive, who is betrayed.
Huang Ruo’s score doffs its cap to Puccini. If you know Butterfly, you’ll pick out quotations or references – a humming chorus and allusions to the love duet as Gallimard and Song consummate their relationship. Both characters echo Pinkerton’s closing cries of “Butterfly!”, Gallimard as he searches for his lover at the end of Act 2, Song – with a baritone voice – as the convicted Gallimard, dressed in Butterfly’s kimono and singing Butterfly’s lines when she reads the inscription on her father’s sword, kills himself in prison.
But this is no pastiche or parody. There are passages of great beauty and intensity; at other moments, the music pounds and punches, especially the industrial percussion as the People’s Liberation Army hails Chairman Mao or, after the Cultural Revolution, to underscore the beating inflicted by Comrade Chin on the denounced Song. The opera’s framing device of Gallimard in prison doesn’t give away too much of the plot, but the gossiping Parisian party goers who open Acts 1 and 2 certainly do. The libretto contains a few cringeworthy rhymes (and confuses “Un bel dì” with Butterfly’s suicide), but propels the action forward swiftly.
James Robinson’s Santa Fe production was revived here by Kimberley Prescott in a fully costumed concert staging featuring Greg Emetaz’ giant projections. Conductor Carolyn Kuan drove the BBCSO powerfully through the score while the action played out on a strip of the Barbican stage behind her.
The opera is a tremendous vehicle for Korean-American countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim, incredibly believable as Song Liling. Kim, who does a great Cecilia Bartoli drag act, here essayed the excerpted “Un bel dì” creditably, his lithe movements then replicating Zhu Yingtai’s death scene from the Yue opera The Butterfly Lovers. Kim’s fluid countertenor is extremely beautiful and he brought real pathos to Song’s questioning aria “Awoke as a butterfly” after being ordered to follow Gallimard to Paris to continue spying. “Do I pretend to know the truth? Do I know the truth and so I pretend?”
Mark Stone, also revisiting his Santa Fe role, sang Gallimard, his baritone experiencing a few husky moments early on, but his voice grew in stature as his character’s despair increased. The final confrontation where Song proves to Gallimard that he is a man was powerfully done, forcing him to admit that the skin Gallimard had touched remains the same.
Fleur Barron’s incisive mezzo impressed in the brief role of Comrade Chin, as did Charne Rochford as Marc, Gallimard’s childhood friend who visits him as a vision. Kevin Burdette leant ironic presence to French ambassador Manuel Toulon. The BBC Singers, kettled behind the percussion and brass, sang with high energy.
The performance was recorded for later broadcast on BBC Radio 3, but Huang Ruo’s opera deserves wider success and more than one-off performances; that would very much depend, though, on finding countertenors who can perform the role of Song Liling as excellently as Kangmin Justin Kim. That would be a huge challenge.
