Metropolitan Opera Archives

Associate Director/
Production a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sid R. Bass
Broadcast live on Sirius Metropolitan Opera Radio
Streamed live at metopera.org
Madama Butterfly is a co-production with English National Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera
Madama Butterfly received six performances this season
Production photos of Madama Butterfly by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera.

FUNDING:
Production a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sid R. Bass

Review 1:

Review of Joshua Rosenblum in the January 2008 issue of Opera News

Anthony Minghella's production of "Madama Butterfly" made a deservedly large splash last year as the [beginning] act of Peter Gelb's first season as Met general manager. Minghella's elegant, often breathtaking rendering, adorned with ritualistic Japanese touches and enhanced by the use of Bunraku puppetry, remains awe-inspiring.

The big news in this year's outing, however, was Patricia Racette in the title role (seen Oct. 8). Set against the exotic pageantry and ceremony, the genuine humanity of Racette's Cio-Cio-San has an especially devastating impact. Racette drew on her formidable arsenal of dramatic and musical resources as she traversed Butterfly's emotional journey - one of the most demanding in the repertory with an unerring sense of who the girl is and how she should sound every step of the way.

In her first scene, Racette managed to seem childlike and innocent without resorting to annoying girlish mannerisms or affectations. Instead, she did it with the natural grace and self-effacement of a well-trained teenaged geisha. Later in the scene, she shimmered beguilingly, in both voice and demeanor, as she told Roberto Alagna's Pinkerton about her trip to the mission to become a Christian. At this point, Racette let the geisha facade slip a bit, allowing a glimpse of Butterfly's passion and vulnerability.

In the couple's subsequent scene alone together, Racette sang with an easy, speech-like delivery and a vibrato that added natural sweetness. Here and everywhere, her sound was ravishing, and the Met orchestra under Mark Elder glittered opulently in sympathetic response. Racette and Alagna were perfectly matched vocally in the unison duet passages, and her high C at the end sounded like a genuine cry of rapture.

In Act II, once Butterfly has been abandoned (after a clever bit of "now you see him, now you don't" stagecraft by Minghella), Racette displayed an unmistakable gravitas born of pain. Her "Un bel di" poured out like liquid gold, but the pathos underlying it was almost unbearable. The high drama moments - her cries of "Morta" at the end of "Che tua madre," her collapse upon seeing Pinkerton's ship - had phenomenal power, given her prior restraint. By the time Racette reached the final scene with her son, her Butterfly had evolved into a fully mature, emotionally devastated woman.

There was not a weak link in the rest of the cast. Alagna proved particularly well suited to Pinkerton - his ease of vocal production matched his facile pronouncements in "Dovunque al mondo," and he was almost likable when he dropped his smugness upon Butterfly's entrance (although there was one very prominent, extremely sharp high A at the end of the scene with Sharpless). Maria Zifchak rattled off Suzuki's chatter in Act I with unusually good diction and turned convincingly fearsome later in her attack on David Cangelosi's vividly characterized Goro. As Sharpless, Luca Salsi's robust, burnished baritone gave him the authority to be the moral center of the opera, and in Act II he bore his anguish magnificently. David Won was a noble, dignified

Yamadori, someone Butterfly could possibly have found happiness with in other circumstances. The portrayal of Butterfly's young son by three black-clad Bunraku puppeteers - one of Minghella's most talked-about touches - afforded some moments of subtle poetic beauty that could not have been achieved by a real child, no matter how gifted.

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