I have a Really Shameful Confession, Gentle Readers: before last night, I'd never seen
Madama Butterfly live. I don't know how many times I listened to recordings before being able to do so without an intermission to stalk wrathfully around the apartment, grumbling choice epithets for Pinkerton... but I digress. I went for the sake of Patricia Racette's Cio-Cio-San, and out of curiosity about Anthony Minghella's production; neither disappointed. Seen in person at last, Minghella's production is indeed stunningly beautiful, as well as overtly theatrical. With so problematic a text, it struck me as no bad expedient to force the audience into awareness of how artificial the presentation of this brutal drama as romantic spectacle is. The
Personenregie was musically sensitive and highlighted personal interactions intelligently and poignantly. While the stylized crowd scenes appear as through Pinkerton's (exoticizing, Othering) perspective, more intimate moments are staged to reflect Butterfly's point of view. This is haunting in the orchestral lead-in to Act II (one moment, domestic bliss; the next, Pinkerton simply disappears) and during the Humming Chorus, but perhaps most effective in the ecstatic finale of Act I, a fantasy of lanterns and showering peonies. (All that said, the staging is not unproblematic, as Zerbinetta of Likely Impossibilities has
pointed out.) Racette's performance was the musical highlight, though other singers made notable contributions as well.
