Beg, borrow or steal but go . . . The Welsh National Opera’s new production of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, at Oxford’s New Theatre tonight and tomorrow, is breathtaking.
Starting with the sets: this is no 19th century fictional Japanese production. The director Lindy Hume has set the tragedy in a J.G.Ballard-esque dystopian near-future, with overtones of a mental asylum (gas-lighting?), leaving the audience free to draw the parallels with modern American imperialism.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the house”
The first act focuses on the deal-making of the older, powerful men – Butterfly’s glamorous new American husband Pinkerton, her controlling uncle who is the marriage-broker, assuring the groom that divorces in Japan are as easy as breaking a rent agreement – and the vulnerability of the teenage geisha Butterfly, impoverished and fantasising about an idealised America.
The men are suited and booted, the women in tutus and bubble perms (was there ever a more frivolous look?), the power dynamic writ large.
The first act sets the scene, exquisitely sung by Leonardo Caimi (Pinkerton) and Joyce El-Khoury (Butterfly). The WNO Orchestra, were fresh and fabulous after 18 months of silence, under the baton of the warm and encouraging Carlo Rizzi.
The electrifying dynamic relies heavily on the pivotal contract between a fragile, flower-like 15 year-old, and a larger, older man, before Pinkerton leaves her pregnant, not returning for three years.
“Intense, tragic, sublime – catch Madame Butterfly today or tomorrow at Oxford’s New Theatre”
El-Khoury is simply magnificent: in deluded hope, in desperate disappointment and finally in sorrow, as the inevitable abandonment and destitution is finally brought home to her. Beautifully supported by Kezia Bienek as her maid Susuki, the Consul, sung by Mark Stone, and the self-absorbed Pinkerton.
It’s all about him, every line beginning with “I”. Butterfly cannot face giving up her beautiful son to Pinkerton’s American wife and chooses death with honour, rather that life with dishonour. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Intense, tragic, sublime – catch Madam Butterfly today or tomorrow at Oxford’s New Theatre https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/welsh-national-opera-madam-butterfly/new-theatre-oxford/ or opt for WNO’s second offering at Oxford’s New Theatre this weekend The Barber of Seville (Fri 12 Nov-Sat 13-Nov) https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/welsh-national-opera-the-barber-of-seville/new-theatre-oxford/
Sheila Bailey
