CLASSICAL AND JAZZ: Madam Butterfly is at the London Coliseum
Published: 10 May, 2012
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
The late film-maker Anthony Minghella was a sucker for off-beat love stories. So it’s little surprise the award-winning director of such well-loved romances as Truly Madly Deeply should have been drawn to Madam Butterfly for his first foray into opera direction in 2005.
Puccini’s tale of a young Japanese geisha who gives up everything to marry a much older US naval officer, only to be abandoned after a summer of love, pulls all the necessary strings of blind love and tragedy.
Minghella’s original production for English National Opera received ecstatic reviews and is revived now at the Coliseum with soprano Mary Plazas reprising her 2005 role as Butterfly and tenor Gwyn Hughes once again her dishonourable American suitor Pinkerton. Sarah Tipple steps into Minghella’s shoes as director.
Set in Nagasaki before the First World War – the opera debuted in 1904 – Minghella adopted a Japanese minimalism. The stage is lacquered black, reminiscent of Japanese crafted woodwork.
Paper screens create rooms and boundaries, there are few props and the backdrop is a wide rectangular blank screen bathed in red, blue, green or yellow light.
Minghella, who died in 2008, made up for physical detail with luminescent lighting that seems typical of his work – it reminded me of glare in The English Patient or the sunny scenes of The Talented Mr Ripley.
The traditional Japanese costumes of Butterfly’s relatives who disown her, a chorus of women and her suitor Prince Yomadori, are beautifully coloured and sumptuous.
And above the whole is a black, reflective fabric that reveals what goes on behind the screens and distorts the action beneath, creating an unreal floating effect.
Great use is made of shadows and puppetry of the Japanese Banraku style.
Of course, this is all dressing. What really matters is whether the performers can successfully wring our hearts at Butterfly’s pain.
There is no doubting that Puccini’s opera, the narrative, structure and gorgeous music, is a masterpiece.
There are minor quibbles. It’s hard to believe that Plazas is a 15-year-old girl.
Not because she’s obviously older, but because she doesn’t quite seem dainty – delicate – enough.
For all its loveliness though it’s hard to believe this is the same opera the Wall Street Journal described as “One of the most beautiful things... ever staged”.
Perhaps it’s lost a little something because its creator is no longer here to breathe his life into it, or perhaps time takes the edge off all things, a little like videotapes losing something every time they’re recorded over.
Nevertheless, it is a moving, engrossing production, beautiful to look at and moving to listen to.
• Madam Butterfly is at the Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2. 9 more performances till June 2. From £22, 020 7845 9300, www.eno.org