Theatre Review: Madama Butterfly, Opera North, The Lowry, Manchester

Nov 15 2007 by Glyn Mon Hughes, Liverpool Daily Post

WHEN Opera North flags up a new production, it’s almost guaranteed that it will be a fresh, innovative approach to any work.

Couple that promise with the fact that they were reviving an old warhorse – Puccini’s tear-jerker Madama Butterfly – and we should have been in for a treat. And, indeed, that’s the way it turned out.

Tim Albery’s direction and Hildegard Bechtler’s set designs combined simplicity with clarity – typically Japanese, in many ways. Gone was any attempt to create gardens, vistas overlooking the city and the port or even the inside of a traditional Japanese house. Instead, here was a functional set which allowed the imagination to roam freely. And it worked.

What also worked was the fact that this was the original two-act version of the opera which had been a catastrophic failure at its first performance in Milan in 1904, so much so that the score was withdrawn the day after the premiere by Puccini and his publisher and extensively revised. Again, it worked – but that is with more than a century of hindsight.

Musically, too, this was a fine performance. Cio-Cio-San – Madama Butterfly herself – was sung by French soprano Anne Sophie Duprels, and she achieved something rarely heard by women who attempt this role. She had the delicacy of a 15-year-old Japanese maiden, and yet the power of a woman wronged in love by that scoundrel Pinkerton, again ably sung by the Mexican baritone Rafael Rojas.

Perhaps slightly less convincing was Ann Taylor’s Suzuki, although that really is a minor observation.

Humming Chorus apart, there’s not a massive role for the chorus – something common to a good many Puccini operas – and that’s something of a shame since the Opera North chorus is certainly worth listening to.

The star turn of the night, though, had to be the orchestra which performed stunningly well. The conducting of Wyn Davies had much to do with that – inspirational and fast-paced.

Somewhat off-putting, though, was the fact this production jumped on the bandwagon of running a preamble. The assembling audience was treated to a mime of what could well have been geishas in their dressing rooms preparing to meet their public. While the geisha connection might have been obvious, the rest wasn’t. But that’s a minor point – and it helped the show go on.