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by Giacomo Puccini, directed by Jordan Lee Brown

Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

January 24-February 16, 2025

Cio-Cio San: “Ma il turbine rovescia / le quercie più robuste”

The Canadian Opera Company is currently presenting the first production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly since 1986 that is not the famous production designed by Susan Benson and directed by Brian Macdonald. The Benson/Macdonald Butterfly was so popular that after it premiered in 1990, the COC revived it five times, more than any other COC production. Former COC General Director Alexander Neef liked the production so much he told Benson he hoped the COC would rebuild it. Unfortunately, that notion was not passed on to Neef’s successor, the now dismissed Perryn Leech, who programmed a production co-owned by Houston Grand Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Lyric Opera of Chicago. Sadly, that production is demonstrably inferior to the Benson/Macdonald Butterfly. Add to this an indifferent Cio-Cio San and an unsubtle conductor and you have the presentation of a favourite opera that is far from ideal.

On paper the creative for the current production looks impressive with Britons Michael Grandage as director and Christopher Oram as designer. While Grandage’s direction (here recreated by American Jordan Lee Brown) is detailed and sensitive, Oram’s set is unattractive and awkward. The set depicts a red pathway sweeping from an raised platform upstage to end downstage left. Grandage often uses this pathway to portray figures in silhouette before Neil Austin’s lighting (recreated by Michael Kangas) lights them from the front.

The libretto states that Cio-Cio San’s house is on top of a hill overlooking Nagasaki Bay. That’s why the chorus and others complain so often about having to climb up to it. In Oram’s set there is no house. Oram has a panelled wooden screen that can be pulled out from stage right to meet the pathway to symbolize the house, after which it is pushed back out of sight. Because so much of the action takes place inside Cio-Cio San’s house, this panel is pulled out and pushed back so often one wonders why Oram didn’t consider a better solution.

Indeed, Benson’s design already had a better and more trenchant solution. During the overture the chorus constructed Cio-Cio San’s house before our eyes on the hilltop. This emphasis on the artifice of the set emphasized an important aspect of the opera that Oram’s set does not – namely, that the opera is a construct. People who look for realism in this opera must acknowledge that the action takes place on stage in a theatre in an artificial world where everyone sings their thoughts to orchestral accompaniment and where supposedly Japanese and American people speak Italian.

In Act 1 Oram’s set has legs and borders that look like gold lacquer, with stylized pine boughs seemingly slipping off the borders to form “real” boughs. This idea derives from the notion that Cio-Cio San is like the figure from a lacquer box come to life: “Ma dal suo lucido fondo di lacca / come con subito moto si stacca”. Thus, unfortunately, Oram’s set reinforces the negative view of Cio-Cio San as a doll-like figure rather than a real human being.

The worst aspect of Oram’s set it that it contains a revolve that Grandage uses only once during the opera. This occurs in the famous scene where Cio-Cio San, Suzuki and Sorrow wait up all night hoping to see Pinkerton arrive after his three years away. Grandage has them gather on the crest of the hill with their backs to us and then during the Humming Chorus and orchestral interlude, has the revolve turn 360º in two stages. We first see the group from behind, then briefly in front, then from behind again. This pointless movementstems from the false notion that the audience needs some kind of activity to watch during this interlude. It too bad you can hear the revolve grinding away during one of the most sublime passages in the score.

The Benson/Macdonald approach was far superior. Macdonald had Cio-Cio San, Suzuki and Sorrow sit in front of Cio-Cio San’s house, already on the hilltop, sand stare out into the audience. During the interlude, lighting designer Michael Whitfield provided the most exquisite demonstration of his craft as he depicted in night shifting into day, capturing the chill just before the sun comes up and then its growing warmth. Meanwhile, Sorrow and Suzuki gradually fall asleep while Cio-Cio San valiantly fights off sleep as hope as disappointment play in her expression. This was the finest portrayal of this passage I’ve ever seen.

The casting of Eri Nakamura, a Japanese soprano, as Butterfly would seem to be ideal for those following identitarian politics in the theatre. Unfortunately, on opening night, Nakamura decided to save her voice for nearly the entire opera. One might possibly understand a soprano saving her voice to deliver a splendid ”Un bel dì”, but Nakamura did not even sing that, the most famous aria in the opera, at full voice and received only polite applause for her noticeable lack of effort. Only for Cio-Cio San’s final scene, “Con onor muore”, did she pull out all the stops and show us that she actually has a powerful voice at her command. People paying to see Madama Butterfly are paying to see a soprano give her all to the role from the start. For a performer not to so do unless unwell insults the audience.

Nakamura’s holding back was in stark contrast to the performances of Chinese-Australian tenor Kang Wang as Pinkerton, Korean mezzo-soprano Hyona Kim as Suzuki and American bass-baritone Michael Sumuel as Sharpless. With his good looks, ringing voice and phenomenal lung-power Wang should go far. One would never know that this was Wang’s role debut as Pinkerton since has the full measure of role, smirking at quaint Japanese customs but clearly enraptured by Butterfly’s beauty. Pinkerton may be the villain of the opera, but Wang almost makes us forget this when he sings “Dovunque al mondo” or “Addio, fiorito asil” with such power and clarity of tone.

Hyona Kim is a wonderful Suzuki, patently more engaged with her role than Nakamura with hers. Kim has the gift of a large, warm voice that brims with compassion, exactly the sound the best Suzuki should have. While she sings full out on her own, Kim also knows how to blend with Nakamura in the lovely Flower Duet “Scuoti quella fronda di ciliegio”.

Michael Sumuel shapes his deep voice and chooses his gestures to reveal Sharpless’s anxiety first over Pinkerton’s fecklessness in ignoring his warnings and then his shame at Pinkerton’s return with an American wife. The palpable emotion Sumuel brings out in Sharpless’s letter scene with Cio-Cio San is one of the most moving sequences in the opera.

Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson forces the COC Orchestra into a hard-driven account of the score. The sections of the orchestra, so admired for how well they blend, here seems to compete for dominance against each other with the brass the usual winners. This means that the smaller parts assigned to singers with smaller voices – Julius Ahn as Goro, Gene Wu as The Bonze, Samuel Chan as Prince Yamadori and Emily Rocha as Kate Pinkerton – were often completely drowned out. The orchestra played so loudly during the famous Humming Chorus that virtually no humming could be heard.

Many people may not know how important the Benson/Macdonald Butterfly is to the Four Seasons Centre. A model of Benson’s set was used as the sample set when Diamond Schmitt were designing the interior of R. Fraser Elliott Hall, the opera house auditorium. As a result of the team’s admiration for Benson’s design, the colour palette of the set became the colour palette of the auditorium. Anyone who saw the Benson/Macdonald production in 2009 or 2014 will know how seamlessly the stage picture flows into the surrounding hall as if the entire auditorium were part of the set. The plea may be in vain, but because of the historical importance of the Benson/Macdonald production and because of its superior ability to reflect the emotions of the opera while still reminding us to see the opera as an opera, I wish the COC would heed Alexander Neef’s desire to rebuild Benson’s production so that future generations can see that Canadian design can now and then achieve perfection.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Kang Wang as Pinkerton and Eri Nakamura as Cio-Cio San; Michael Sumuel as Sharpless and Kang Wang as Pinkerton (far left) and Hyona Kim as Suzuki and Eri Nakamura as Cio-Cio San (far right); Eri Nakamura as Cio-Cio San and Kang Wang as Pinkerton; Hyona Kim as Suzuki. © 2025 Michael Cooper.

For tickets visit: www.coc.ca