“A beautiful spot: the sea, the harbour”, exclaims the American consul, Sharpless, on seeing the perspective over Nagasaki in Act I of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. This exclamation took on a new relevance in Opera Australia’s outdoor production on Sydney Harbour, an annual event for the last three years. The stage on the waters of Farm Cove had as backdrop not only the celebrated Opera House, but also the Harbour Bridge and as dusk fell, thousands of lights from the city buildings added to the atmosphere. More so than La traviata or Carmen (the previous offerings), Butterfly engaged with the surroundings. One character, Prince Yamadori, even arrived by motor-boat, and a giant orb representing the sun was illuminated from the water for the final scene.
Outdoor opera comes with its own challenges and limitations – what it gains in picturesque spectacle, it loses in sound. All the singers were miked, and the invisible orchestra was also amplified. This was inevitable, given the absence of the resonant space within which the performers normally work. The electronic amplification was intended to compensate for this, but in fact went much further, with parts of Act II being almost painfully loud. Other difficulties had to do with the weather on opening night, which was unusually blustery. Two signs suspended from cranes swayed menacingly until secured (one ended up semi-submerged), and the diaphanous ballet of the free-floating silk banners was so vigorous that they had to be held down during the wedding scene. The cast coped admirably with these additional challenges, a few slips on the damp surface aside.
The production team, led by Àlex Ollé (of La Fura dels Baus, the experimental Catalan theatrical company) magnified the story of a deserted and betrayed child-wife in Imperial Japan into a tale of corporate greed and environmental pillage. This was clear from the the crane-mounted signs marked “Lost. Paradise” at the beginning, later reused as development billboards. These evils were personified in the figure of Pinkerton, whose slicked-back hair and business suit shrieked Wall Street at its most uncaring. Written as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, he was reimagined here as a property tycoon, whose company replaced the delicate line of trees in Act I by a mix of finished and unfinished dwellings after the interval. At one point, the moralising got a little heavy-handed: the “Humming Chorus” in Act II saw a line of dispossessed people walking across the stage, an idea used previously (and to far greater effect) in another OA Puccini production, John Bell’s Tosca.