So I went to see the simulcast of Madama Butterfly yesterday and got this raincheck (for a movie not simulcast) because the sound punked out at the start of the opera. Several members of the audience broke the silence with loud hissy fits, as if the cinema had screwed up the sound on purpose.Patricia Racette, as Cio-Cio-San, was superb. At the first intermission, she mugged for the camera while touching on the challenges of playing a 15-year-old when twice that age. Racette is obviously more like three times that and her acknowledgement of it was hilarious. At least Racette had an age peer in her leading man. Marcello Giordani, as Pinkerton, and Dwayne Croft, as Sharpless, were both very good. Maria Zifchak did a good job as Suzuki.
Puccini's music is wonderful but the story of Butterfly irritates me no end. This production, by the late Anthony Minghella, had minimalist staging and made clever and effective use of a bunraku-type puppet as the child Sorrow. Loved the puppet and the puppeteers, but I'm a fool for bunraku. Still, I did not like the Cio-Cio puppet to start Act 3. For one thing, the puppet looked like an old lady. I also could not stand the costumes by fashion designer Han Feng, which were weirdly off.
We were stuck in the middle of a lot of dolled-up members of the local opera club. One was wearing a bottle of perfume. It was sick-making. Then there was the puffed-up coot in front who was perhaps confused by the Japanese theme and thought it was karaoke time. Act 2 is all Cio-Cio and as she started so did he, singing along and imitating a conductor. His wife seemed to enjoy it but no one else did.
