Madama Butterfly

Funny old art form, classic opera. Sublime music goes hand in hand with a mandatory suspension of disbelief. Currently I blame Puccini, who in this case wrote 1904 music of great range, maturity and power for a fifteen year old lead character. He could easily have aged his tragic geisha in her thirties: the story would still have worked. But, no; Cio-Cio-San, nicknamed Butterfly, tells the worried US Consul that she’s fifteen ‑ after he has guessed that she’s ten!

Visiting American soprano Patricia Racette scores a vocal triumph in Moffatt Oxenbould’s much-revived 1997 production. Her ‘One Fine Day’ is a poignant joy, and the audience rises to her after a magnificently sung down-centre suicide. But she never overcomes the central problem dumped in her lap by Signor Puccini: fifteen, she ain’t. Has any prima donna ever managed to square this particular circle?

The other big problem for non-buffs is the casting of Rosario La Spina as the dashing Lieutenant Pinkerton who spends his Nagasaki shore leave from US Navy ship ‘Abraham Lincoln’ getting the teen geisha to fall for him. Puccini’s great love duet convinces you that they are madly in love with each other, and La Spina has a fine, rich, effortless tenor voice. But he is, shall we say, on the large side - portly, perhaps. Not yet Pavarotti-sized, nevertheless his uniform is made from many metres of cloth.

Does this matter? It depends on your ability and willingness to suspend disbelief for the sake of the undoubted musical experience. Oxenbould’s production points the way by employing elements of traditional Japanese Theatre to distance the unlikely reality onstage. Oddly-wrapped figures – a cross between mummies and surgery nurses — assist the action, supplying props to the elegantly bare stage when required. Sliding panels reveal newcomers and, to end Act One, the walls disappear completely for a thrilling star-studded, full-mooned fantasy love scene.

Graeme Macfarlane is creepily fine as the shifty, bowler-hatted marriage broker and Jacqueline Dark adds dignity and strength as Butterfly’s long-suffering servant/companion. The very young, uncredited boy who played Butterfly’s secret son was wonderfully still and focussed: his curtain call was thunderous.

Pre-overture, an on-stage announcer informed us that the performer advertised to play Consul Sharpless was ill and that Andrew Moran “has agreed to sing the role”, Opera Australia code for “the understudy is on tonight”. At any rate, Moran sang the role very well, with gathering unease and foreboding. The fact that he was a couple of decades too young for the part only added to the general sense of operatic disbelief and delusion. 

Frank Hatherley

Photograph: Patricia Racette as Madama Butterfly and Rosario La Spina as Pinkerton in Opera Australia's Madama Butterfly. Picture: Branco Gaica