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Opera
Madama Butterfly
Royal Opera House
Ariadne on Naxos; Die Fledermaus
English Touring Opera, Cambridge
Madama Butterfly is a great opera, by far Puccini's finest, but one should see it only rarely. It is both simple and shocking, and seeing or listening to it often, which is tempting both on account of its extraordinary melodiousness and its tragic power, can only lessen its force. Perhaps with that in mind the Royal Opera hasn't mounted it for almost a decade, and now it arrives in a new production by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, with sets by Christian Fenouillat. It is an almost sensationally straightforward, understated affair. The stage has a small table, and sliding screens. When they move, sideways or upwards, Japanese-print-style vistas appear - a tree with blossom, then almost bare, and so on. There is a hint of kitsch, I imagine unintentional. Dress is Edwardian, Sharpless looking faintly like Quentin Crisp. It is a sanitised staging, too: no accumulation of squalor as Butterfly's finances run low, no blood when she commits hara-kiri. The narrative line is as clear as possible, gestures are economical, one is almost tempted to say it's all a bit clinical.
One might say that of the conducting of Antonio Pappano in Act I, too. After a rapid opening, tempi were leisurely, textures refined almost to the point of etiolation. Butterfly's entry, almost always one of...
