(Photo credit: Keith Saunders)

“Harrowing” might be the best word for this powerful production of “Madama Butterfly,” the first opera in Opera Australia’s (OA) 2026 Sydney summer season and, in fact, the first opera in Opera Australia’s 70^th anniversary season.

Admittedly, Puccini’s subject matter is disturbing, albeit clothed in seductively gorgeous music. Finally realizing that the fable-like love she ‘shared’ with the American sailor Pinkerton was ephemeral, even delusional, Butterfly commits suicide with the sword her own father used to commit seppuku. Of course, these days, as opposed to 1904 when this work was premiered, audiences might look with keener cultural awareness at this story of the cost to Butterfly of marrying a Westerner and stepping outside her own Japanese milieu, and various companies have recently tried certain measures to provide this background. In an earlier production, in 2022, Opera Australia provided a QR code which audience-members could scan to give the company feedback on “Historical attitudes towards race, faith and gender…found in many traditional opera stories…”

This production, a revival of an interpretation by former Opera Australia Artistic Director Moffatt Oxenbould which dates from 1997 and has been seen in Philadelphia, Montreal and Taipei as well as previously in Melbourne and Sydney, wrings huge emotion from the score. Alex Budd, newly-appointed Opera Australia CEO, speaks of this production’s “quiet power” in his introduction to the printed program. True, this production is not histrionic. Its power lies in the clear delineation of characters’ behavior and motives leading to a gripping intensity in the cast’s performances led by Guanqun Yu in her role debut as Butterfly.

What the audience sees here seems to be the fruit of particularly thorough and intense rehearsal. The printed program credits Matthew Barclay as Revival Director and Mayu Iwasaki as Cultural Consultant and though someone sitting in the audience seeing this production for the first time may not initially be sure of the exact proportions in which Barclay or Iwasaki or Oxenbould contributed to the feeling of authenticity in this classic portrayal of the clash of cultures, the fact is that the drama felt rivetingly relatable. Enquiries later revealed that this revival made changes to hand and arm movement and to bowing, things that might not jump out at the audience. But certainly, the slow and deep bows which seemed scrupulously observed offered noticeable ‘metrical’ counterpoint to other action. Of course, this production has been seen some 16 times since its 1997 premiere and that suggests that much of the authenticity, certainly of the emotional world, was ingrained from the start.

Cast Highlights

Soprano Guanqun Yu as the 15-year-old Butterfly, deluded into thinking that the naval lieutenant from another land truly loves her, tenor Diego Torre as the aforesaid Lt. Pinkerton congenitally (it would seem) predisposed to toy with and betray Butterfly, baritone Samuel Dundas as the US consul Sharpless who knows that the situation vis-à-vis Butterfly and Pinkerton is rife with potential tragedy, and mezzo-soprano Sian Sharp as Suzuki, Butterfly’s loyal yet cagey maid, rewarded us with beautifully-etched characters. It is a ‘no-brainer’ to say that “Butterfly” lives on in the world’s opera houses because of its music, but there was actorly detail here to savor. Virgilio Marino as the marriage-broker Goro was particularly affecting, even if that’s something that can’t often be said of this tenor role. There was palpable horror in Marino’s line in Act two, “She thinks she’s still married,” when Goro is trying to convince Butterfly to marry the wealthy prince, Yamadori (Leon Vitogiannis), a match that might help her save face despite Pinkerton’s desertion.

The various ‘two- and three-handers’ mapped complex social situations. For example, the powerful questioning of Butterfly over her possessions (which include the sword by which her father killed himself), or the scene where Dundas as Sharpless finally gives up trying to read Butterfly the letter bearing bad news in the face of Butterfly’s (Yu’s) enthusiasm over the arrival of a letter from Pinkerton. A thrilling musical climax such as the joining of Torre and Dundas’s voices in Act one, before the wedding, could easily be read as portraying the irony of their differing opinions about the situation: “Non c’è gran male…” versus “Sarebbe gran peccato…” (“There is no great harm” versus “It would be a great sin…”).

Surtitles help, of course. But there was a striking marriage of vocal and gestural language in this production that reinforced the information. Torre’s waving of his hand in front of a meditating figure (to see if it moves?) was an early expression of Pinkerton’s insensitivity. And for those in the audience who can’t help but side with Sharpless the consul who gives an early warning of the danger of this match, Dundas’s anger at the conclusion of the “Io so che alle sue pene” trio in Act two scene two was actually gratifying. Pinkerton wants to flee the scene of devastation he has created and Dundas angrily handed him his cap.

But despite what’s been said about Puccini’s “seductively gorgeous music” as if that was a criticism when in fact soaring melody and rich orchestration are Puccini’s greatest feature, this production was extremely satisfying, musically. Though previous appearances have made him well-known to Opera Australia audiences, this was Andrea Battistoni’s first production as OA’s Music Director, and it augurs well for the future relationship. The production promised attention to musical detail even before the curtain had gone up, with brass players warming up in the pit, fine-tuning their choral voicing of Puccini’s very specific orchestrations. In fact, though riveted by the action on stage, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the pit every so often by excellent playing, an example being Matthieu Arama’s violin solos. Battistoni piloted the work through the emotional swirl of the score from the perhaps swifter-than-usual opening fugue which illustrated the hustle-and-bustle of the wedding preparations.

The ‘harrowing’ epithet at the beginning of this review can be credited largely to Guanqun Yu in the title role. Hers was a well-studied portrayal of what one might call Butterfly’s maturing-unto-death. Yes, we felt her desolation at the end, but sometimes her delivery was just achingly beautiful from a musical point-of-view, as in her descant over the chorus on the arrival of the Japanese ‘party’ prior to the wedding.

Diego Torre was a late replacement in the role of Pinkerton, although it is a role he has often played, and most recently for Opera Australia in 2022 and 2023. His passion was palpable in lines such as “…I pursue her though I may crush her” (“furor m’assale se pure infrangerne dovessi l’ale”), but he also effectively conveyed guilt in his Act two aria, “Addio, fiorito asil.” As suave as Torre’s voice may be, he effectively conveyed the villainy at the core of Pinkerton’s character.

Production Details

Russell Cohen and Peter England’s sets and costumes were “inspired by traditional Japanese dress,” but arguably not as sumptuous as other settings of “Butterfly.” They were maybe a little inchoate in terms of specifying time and place (at least until Pinkerton put on his naval dress), but it could be argued that the relative abstraction of Japanese influences thrust audience-attention on the raw drama. There was some lovely pointing-up of correspondences in the text, as between the starry backdrop that came out at the end of the love-duet, paralleling the flowers that fell from above in Act two’s “Flower duet.”  The color scheme was interesting with a predominance of reds and greens, though closer, to these eyes, to ‘Indian red’ or ‘jasper’ perhaps even ‘lust’, and ‘jade’ or ‘sea green’ or maybe even ‘celadon’, a color used in ceramics. The set was a floating platform in a moat, in which candle-boats could be set adrift, certainly redolent of Japan. Butterfly was able to ditch the artifacts of her rejected traditional beliefs in its waters.

The program booklet also credits Barclay as Movement Director, and the pantomime with phantom (‘fugitive’) Pinkertons through the tempestuous Act two scene two prelude was another effective example of enhancing the music through meaningful stage action.

Contemporary productions of “Madama Butterfly” often have to contend with modern-day sensitivities with regard to presenting non-European cultures. Shizuka Hayashi was credited with the Chinese translations; the surtitles paired with English above the proscenium. That might raise a question of how close Hanzi is to Kanji, but served to suggest that this story of the innocent young Japanese woman and her admittedly predatory visitor has probably been repeated in reality in China, Vietnam, or wherever, to quote librettist Giuseppe Giacosa: “lo Yankee vagabondo si gode e traffica sprezzando rischi.”