Butterfly soars in spite of crude direction

by David Gordon Duke

Madama Butterfly
Vancouver Opera
Queen Elizabeth Theatre
November 27,30, December 2,4,7,9,11

Opera companies are well aware of the two compelling reasons to perform the perennial chestnut Madama Butterfly: a wonderful vehicle for the right soprano, it’s almost always unusually good box office.

Audiences expect a fairly satisfying glimpse of Meiji-era Japan. The orchestra must hit a clean balance between delicacy — all those glittering pseudo-Japanese bits — and fairly raw Italian opera style emotionality. Butterfly herself must display the necessary range, and, preferably, look the part of a gentlewoman turned geisha.

Vancouver Opera’s new production toys with our expectations. Anticipated images of old Japan are replaced by an unexpectedly stark set, recycled from Toronto’s Canadian Opera: a two-level raked platform and shoji screens. Traditional costumes have a distressed, almost drab look. Only as the performance unfolds does the subtle play of lighting create satisfying atmosphere and mood.

On a musical level, this is a better than average production. Baritone Gregory Dahl shows vocal depth and versatility in the sympathetic role of Sharpless, the American Consul. Scott Piper makes his Vancouver Opera debut as Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. He’s got a bold tenor voice and brash presence, lacking sophistication, perhaps, but showy and appropriate as the Yank we love to hate.

This show is very much owned by VO Young Artists Programme alumnus Liping Zhang as Cio Cio San. Like Piper, Zhang has a big, passionate voice and crowd-pleasing intensity. She soared through all the big numbers and was well complemented by Piper in their extended first act duet. Conductor Joseph Rescigno, from Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera Company, gets a broad, sumptuous sound from the orchestra, an approach that brings out the work’s verismo lineage more than its pastel japanoiserie.

Vancouver Opera has a lot riding on this particular Butterfly, slated for an extended, almost-holiday-time run. Alas, the production is sabotaged by Playhouse Theatre’s Glynis Leyshon. Like so many tin-eared directors imported to opera from the legitimate stage or film, Leyshon is bound and determined to “make something” of her material, producing a busy and curiously graceless spectacle. She’s enamoured with the tedious cliché of dumbshow during orchestral preludes and interludes, and lards her staging with portentous ersatz kabuki-isms at every turn. She even perversely jettisons the effective traditional business indicated in the score for the work’s dramatic climax. Her inventions would be silly – were they not so crude.

The good news is that Puccini’s iron butterfly is almost director-proof; it can endure any amount of rough handling and still produce a good evening’s entertainment. By overlooking the staging, Vancouver audiences can revel in the musical values of Puccini’s masterpiece — about the only pre-holiday treat that’s richly indulgent but not fattening.

Vancouver Sun
29 Nov. 2004

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