Opera Australia is currently presenting “Madama Butterfly” on the Sydney Harbour with Karah Son. The Korean soprano is one of today’s most sought-after Cio-Cio Sans which OperaWire has called a “tour-de-force whose journey we raptly followed.” She has performed the title role in Tampere, Leipzig, Warsaw, Berlin (Deutsche Oper), Goteborg, and Turin and is set to perform it in San {…}
Credit: Keith Saunders Opera Australia’s annual Handa Opera on the Harbor, named after Opera Australia’s Patron-in-Chief, Japanese businessman Haruhisa Handa, is undoubtedly one of Sydney’s most anticipated yearly social events. At the premiere of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” helmed by Spanish director Àlex Ollé on March 24th, a black-tie audience including three former Australian prime ministers indicated that the show had an {…}
The New Orleans Opera has announced a cast change for its production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” The company said that “tenor Bryan Hymel has regretfully withdrawn from the production” and in his stead, “NOOA is excited to present tenor Jonathan Kaufman in the role of Lt. Pinkerton in his New Orleans Opera debut.” Kaufman is an accomplished vocalist who has {…}
The Book Guild Publishing has announced the upcoming publication of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” literary novelization by acclaimed writer Gary Davis. The publisher has set April 28, 2023, as the novel’s release date. “Davis’ “Butterfly” is set after the American Civil War. When a man from Maine becomes a diplomat in Nagasaki, Japan, he befriends a geisha named Cio-Cio and attends {…}
New Orleans Opera is set to present Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” this March. The opera will star Hiromi Omura and Bryan Hymel as well as Nina Yoshida Nelson, Weston Hurt, Julius Ahn, André Chiagn, and Hidenori Inoue. Aria Umezawa directs with Judith Yan conducting the Louisiana Philharmonic. In a statement about the production, Umezawa noted that “In Puccini’s opera, the titular {…}
Òpera a Catalunya has announced a cast change for its production of “Madama Butterfly.” The company said that Hiroko Morita will no longer perform the role of Cio-Cio San. As a result, Tina Gorina and Carmen Solís share the role of “Madama Butterfly.” Gorina is a Spanish soprano who has performed at the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona, Théâtre {…}
(Credit: Chris Singer) The Palm Beach Opera is set to open its first mainstage production of the 2023 Season with “Madama Butterfly.” The production opens on Jan. 20, 2023 and runs through Jan. 22. The opera will be conducted by acclaimed Italian conductor Carlo Montanaro and will showcase American stage director Alison Mortiz’s production. Sopranos Jennifer Rowley and Toni Marie {…}
It is something of a paradox that the proverbial dearth of tenors coexists with the announcement, in regular intervals, of some new vocal phenomenon which, after a solo recital or two, the recording industry decides to “crown before they are king” – to loosely and no less cynically paraphrase a famous saying by Mascagni. Yet too many are the instances {…}
Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” is set to open at the Teatro La Fenice. The opera will be conducted by Sesto Quatrini, who has performed the Puccini opus on several occasions. “I love ‘Madama Butterfly’ so much. It’s probably the opera that I’ve seen and heard live the most often. When I was working at the Metropolitan, for two whole seasons I {…}
Photo credit: Guy Davies One of the first things I noticed in the program booklet for Opera Australia’s June production of “Madama Butterfly,” the first opera in their 2022 Sydney Opera House winter season, was a QR code which you could scan to give Opera Australia feedback on “Historical attitudes towards race, faith and gender…found in many traditional opera stories…” {…}
Undeniably the big story of this production of the Royal Opera House’s “Madama Butterfly,” as directed by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, was that revival director Daniel Dooner would work to create a dialogue around the work’s most problematic aspects. Such a program involved extensive instruction workshops designed to teach the cast playing Japanese characters how to move, act, laugh, {…}