One could not imagine a more suitable background to an open-air performance of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, than the stunning surroundings of Sydney Harbour, complete with a gorgeous sunset on opening night. With at least three previous Prime Ministers in attendance, the 350m red carpet was rolled out, and the eye-catching designer dresses seemed to compete with the glitter of Oscars Night a few weeks ago. The anticipated rain stayed away, the air remained balmy and a First Nations (Indigenous) elder greeted the audience before the performance began.
The stage for the famous Handa Opera is built on the Harbour every year and the audience can thus catch views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House as a backdrop, while the scenery on the vast floating stage includes a huge white balloon planet rising behind undulating green hills complete with a lovely bamboo forest.
No, this is not Nagasaki, as Sharpless, the American consul, claims (in Michael Honeyman’s warm voice, as he sensitively delivers the human dilemma of the sympathetic if hapless diplomat), but in this production a rich territory for property developers. The idyllic grassy knoll with the white tables and chairs prepared for the wedding in Act 1, has to give way to Cio-Cio-San’s shabby abode, surrounded by half-finished building constructions, in which homeless people amorphously crouch around an open fire in the later acts. The two billboards claiming “Paradise” and “Lost” at the beginning now advertise Pinkerton’s Construction Corporation; greed is good, and the pained emotional beauty of the famous Humming Chorus is starkly offset by the gloomy march of the evicted homeless, accompanied by security guards in the foreground, at the end of Act 2.
This production repeatedly aims at extremes. Brutal poverty is emphasised by Yamadori, Butterfly’s hopeless but wealthy suitor, arriving in a speedboat and the consul being driven between audience and stage by a soundless limousine. Elsewhere, Butterfly not only renounces her religion to please her American husband (which is in the score) but also gives up her oriental appearance and humiliates herself in a “Stars and Stripes” decorated tee-shirt and torn shorts (which certainly is not). Even more confronting is the scene, where her little son is forcibly hauled from her across the wide stage: Australian audiences could not be blamed for being reminded of past sins of the “stolen generation”, when mixed race and Indigenous young children were dragged away from their mothers.
The protagonists were mostly tried and proven in previous Butterfly productions for Opera Australia. Among them, Korean soprano, Karah Son, gave the most heart-warming account of Cio-Cio-San’s tragic life and death. Her voice was distorted in the first few minutes by over-enthusiastic amplification but fortunately, that problem was soon resolved and by the time the climactic point of her aria “Un bel dì, vedremo” arrived, her polished sound and clear articulation was utterly convincing. Her duets with her servant and only true friend, Suzuki, were intimate, although Sian Sharp’s appealing voice was not best served by the microphones.
As Pinkerton, naval officer in Puccini’s score but avaricious capitalist in this production, Diego Torre’s approach to his role was too one-sided. The sonority of his mellow tenor voice remained invariably pleasing, but Pinkerton’s human failings (he is not even sure if marrying Cio-Cio-San is a “love or a whim”) in the opening act, or his feelings of guilt in the final one did not transpire in his shaping of the perfidious American officer. In smaller roles, Virgilio Marino excelled as Goro, the sleazy matchmaker, while David Parkin as the Bonze with his thugs were scary enough to utterly destroy the serene mood of the wedding scene.
As always, the orchestra was hidden under the stage, but their amplification has greatly improved since the early Handa years. The singers could follow Brian Castles-Onion’s sensitive and stylish conducting from a monitor positioned behind the audience, and the ensemble between stage and orchestra was dependably good. The wind and brass sections sounded rounded; however, in comparison, the strings’ body lacked clarity and the sonic power that verismo operas are famous for. It was mostly not their fault; their numbers, particularly in the lower strings, were woefully low.
The staging, created originally by Àlex Ollé and his colleagues from the brilliant Spanish theatrical group, La Fura dels Baus, is a feast for the eyes, and was revived with assured hands by Susana Gómez. It judiciously mixes visual elements of the shockingly provocative with the sensitively beautiful on stage, and Puccini’s timeless melodies stopped just at the right moment to allow for the customary splendid fireworks in the wedding scene.
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