✭✭✭✭✩

by Giacomo Puccini, directed by Brian Macdonald

Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

October 19-31, 2014

Pinkerton: “Sono in questo paese elastici del par, case e contratti”

The Canadian Opera Company is currently presenting the fourth remount of its beloved production of Madama Butterfly directed by Brian Macdonald and designed by Susan Benson.  First staged in 1990, it is a production that never fails to impress.  Characterized by simplicity and restraint, it deemphasizes the exoticism inherent in the setting to evoke the timelessness of tragedy.  Lead by Patricia Racette in her COC debut, the cast on opening night, with one exception, is superb.

Macdonald and Benson’s concept for the design derives from the discussion between Goro and Pinkerton at the start of the action about the nature of Japanese houses: “Vanno e vengono a prova / a norma che vi giova / nello stesso locale / alternar nuovi aspetti ai consueti” (“They can be moved around however you like so that you can alternate the room design whenever you need a change of scenery”).*  Rather than have Goro merely show Pinkerton Cio-Cio San’s house, Macdonald has servants construct it of separate elements before our eyes.  In this subtle way, Macdonald both suggests the impermanence that Pinkerton derides and also underlines the theatricality of the opera with Goro functioning as a kind of stage manager.  The discussion of the impermanence of Japanese houses leads Pinkerton to expand it callously to all things Japanese including (marriage) contracts: “Sono in questo paese elastici del par, case e contratti” (“In this country both houses and contracts are elastic”).

Benson avoids the riot of clashing colours that would have characterized Japanese dress of the Meiji period of early 20th century and instead employs a sober palette of greys tinged with the same orange colour that will appear in the sunset created by lighting designer Michael Whitfield.  While the outlines of the costumes are undeniably Japanese, the muted palette links the Japanese characters to the landscape depicted in a hazy grey backdrop behind the set.  Not only does the colour scheme for the Japanese characters prepare us for the sombre mood of tragedy, but it makes the blacks and whites of Pinkerton and Sharpless stand out to underscore how out of place their characters are in this foreign land.  Butterfly’s white wedding kimono, symbolic both of her marriage to a foreigner and her adoption of a foreign religion, similarly sets her apart from all her neighbours. 

Just as the colour scheme is characterized by restraint, so is Macdonald’s direction.  The Japanese characters move in small steps and make slow, formalized gestures.  Such restraint only heightens any break from the pattern as when the Bonze (Robert Gleadow) strides in to chastise Butterfly, when Suzuki beats Goro or when Butterfly rushes in with her son.  

Patricia Racette delivers the most nuanced performance of Butterfly this reviewer has ever seen.  Her Butterfly displays notable growth in painful experience from Act

1 when she is only fifteen to Act 2 when she is eighteen – youthful idealism having given way to doubt, vivacity having given way to care.  Racette has an unusual voice, clear but rather cool.  She has a vibrato that frequently threatens to go out of control though it never does.  In fact, Racette uses this vocal trait to characterize Butterfly with the natural tension of her vocal production mirroring the conflict within Butterfly between emotion and constraint.  Racette’s account of “Un bel dì” epitomizes Butterfly’s internal struggle to retrieve her former idealism despite her newfound doubt, an interpretation that only increases the aria’s shattering effect. 

Unlike most stagings of the opera, Macdonald does not have Butterfly leave the stage during the “Humming Chorus” and subsequent orchestral interlude while she waits for Pinkerton to arrive.  Rather he has her stand with her son Trouble and Suzuki downstage centre during her night vigil.  As Whitfield’s exquisite lighting vividly depicts sunset, moonrise and a chill sunrise, Racette’s face clearly registers the train of Butterfly’s thoughts from hope to despair to fear.     

Elizabeth DeShong, with her sonorous, authoritative voice, is a much more forceful Suzuki than usual, visibly repressing her growing anger at her mistress’s situation until she finally lashes out at Goro.  Goro himself, well sung by Korean-American tenor Julius Ahn, clad in kimono jacket, hakama trousers and a bowler hat, played up his role as go-between, not just between men and women, but East and West.  American Dwayne Croft uses his expressive baritone to create a deeply sympathetic portrait of Sharpless, whose sorrow at Pinkerton’s betrayal of Butterfly visibly weighs down his spirit. 

Given the sensitive, committed performances of the rest of the cast, Italian tenor Stefano Secco’s Pinkerton is a disappointment.  Secco seems to have unlimited lung power to propel his heroic Italianate voice over the orchestra, but he makes no effort to colour it in response to the text or even to vary his dynamics any more than between forte and fortissimo.  His face remains impassive no matter what he sings and his acting is confined to a small set of generic arm gestures.  Needless to say, Secco was unable to make “Addio, fiorito asil”, Pinkerton’s aria of regret, sound even remotely sincere.

German conductor Patrick Lange positioned the score midway between Wagner and Debussy so that one perceived both the architecture of Puccini’s music as well as its lush detail.  After five stagings, this production by Macdonald and Benson, so beautifully lit by Whitfield, has only grown in stature to become one of the most insightful, as well as the most successful productions the COC has ever commissioned.  

The cast of the opening night discussed above sings again October 15, 18, 21, 24 and 30.  A second cast take over principal roles on October 11, 19, 22, 26, 28 and 31.  In this cast American soprano Kelly Kaduce sings Butterfly, Italian tenor Andrea Carè is Pinkerton and Canadian baritone Gregory Dahl is Sharpless.  Consult the COC website for any variations at www.coc.ca/PerformancesAndTickets/1415Season/MadamaButterfly.aspx.           

©Christopher Hoile

*Translations by Harry N. Dunstan (2010).

Note: A version of this review will appear later this year in Opera News.

Photos: (from top) In front row, Elizabeth DeShong, Patricia Ractette and Stefano Secco; Patricia Racette as Madama Butterfly. ©2014 Michael Cooper.

For tickets, visit www.coc.ca.