Pinned
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- June
- 25
At 9 tonight on THIRTEEN, PBS’ “Great Performances at the Met” airs Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” which was part of its “Live in HD” series this past season. The production itself — by the late Anthony Minghella, who directed the overrated “The English Patient” — is a mixed bag. But the singing, particularly by soprano Patricia Racette as the doomed Cio-Cio-San, more than makes up for it.In staging Puccini’s oft-told tale of a naive geisha’s tragic love for a faithless American naval officer, B.F. Pinkerton (tenor Marcello Giordani), Minghella has drawn on the traditions of Japan’s Kabuki and Noh theater. There’s lots of puppetry, sliding screens and movement, which does not necessarily advance the opera and in one instance, may get in its way. (More on this in a moment.)
As Butterfly and Pinkerton, Racette and Giordani in no way suggest a delicate teenage geisha and her hotshot American Navy boy. Plus, they have absolutely no chemistry. But then Act II begins, and something unexpected and miraculous happens. With Giordani’s Pinkerton offstage — back in America, where he has betrayed his Japanese bride by taking an American wife — Racette alights and digs deep to create an astounding portrait of a deluded yet noble woman whose strength and faith are not returned. Possessed of real acting ability as well as a voice of power and beauty, Racette does what few singers in my memory have done before with this part. She helps you to understand through facial expression, gesture and vocal emphasis that “Madama Butterfly” is really about race and gender. Butterfly — pinned by the strictures of Japanese culture and the prejudices of her time — wants to be a modern woman in turn-of-the-20th-century America. And that misplaced hope defeats her as surely as her love for Pinkerton does.
So when it’s revealed that Butterfly has a 3-year-old son by Pinkerton, born in his absence — a child that the returning Pinkerton and his American wife want to take home with them — it comes as something of a shock to see a puppet instead of a child performer. I saw the “Live in HD” simulcast of this opera in a White Plains theater, and I cannot tell you how outraged some of the women in the audience were. How can you not have a real little boy — the very poignant proof of the vast gulf between Butterfly’s dreams and Pinkerton’s crushing reality?
(In an intermission interview, choreographer Carolyn Choa — Minghella’s widow — said that the puppet was in keeping with the conventions of Japanese theater and also, easier to direct than a real child. Alas, the HD interviews are cut from the PBS broadcasts to fit the operas into a certain time slot, which is too bad. They’re really enlightening.)
I, too, disliked the puppet the first time I saw it, him. But the great thing about being a critic is you’re regularly proven wrong. The puppet — more like a doll — has such a pleasing, expectant expression on its face and is so masterfully handled by three puppeteers clad in black that its presence and movements are just heartbreaking. Adding to the pathos are its interactions with Racette’s Butterfly; mezzo-soprano Maria Zifchak, admirable as her skeptical but loyal maid, Suzuki; and baritone Wayne Croft as the compassionate, rueful American consul, Sharpless.
As the opera built to the inevitably tragic climax, I couldn’t help but weep in the theater. I wept watching the DVD. I bet you will, too.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 6:00 am by Georgette Gouveia.
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