New Victoria Theatre, Woking – 11 March 2022 and touring
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
4****
Madama Butterfly is the kind of opera that puts you through an emotional mangle at the best of times, and this is a pretty bad time. Tonight’s conductor (Vasyl Vasylenko) and some of the performers are Ukrainian. You couldn’t help wondering how they were feeling as the performance went on, and at the end they had a chance to show us. The Ukrainian flag was raised, and the cast sang the Ukrainian national anthem. We stood and clapped and cheered in a heartfelt response (and then hopefully went home and researched ways to help Ukraine in a more practical way).
On with the review – the American Lieutenant Pinkerton has docked in Nagasaki, and cynically goes through a marriage ceremony with Japanese girl Cio-Cio San, known as Madame Butterfly. For him, it’s bit of fun before he has a ‘real’ marriage back home. But for her, it’s true love and total commitment. We learn that Butterfly is 15 years old – ouch. Off sails Pinkerton, and leaves Butterfly holding the baby. Three years later he’s back, but with a wife, Kate, who offers to care for the child. Cio-Cio San sees that she has lost everything, and reaches for the sacred blade that her father used to kill himself…
Cio-Cio San is no pathetic victim however – she is also the strongest and finest character in the opera. Elena Dee has a fabulous voice and sang the role with wonderful dignity and grace, managing to achieve both delicacy and steeliness. Vitalii Liskovetskyi made a suitably self-satisfied sleazeball Pinkerton, devastated by remorse in the last act when he realises what he has done. He was booed at the end, but in a cheery, appreciative way. Katerina Timbaliuk (the maid Suzuki) and Vladimir Dragos (consul Sharpless) came into their own in the moving exchanges towards the end. Anastasiia Blokha also had dignity as Kate, which is a small part but has to have presence.
It’s sung in Italian, but with surtitles above the stage so you can follow the words. The set is all very charming: a Japanese-ish pavilion with sliding screens, and masses of blossom all around. The women’s chorus were fine as the relations who flounce off and reject Chio-Chio San; the men’s chorus seemed weaker, with an orientalist style of walking that perhaps could be abandoned.
This is a production by Ellen Kent, who is known for a sort of industrialisation of opera and ballet, bringing colourful shows and Eastern European performers in particular to big audiences outside the West End and other main centres. Tonight we were especially pleased to see them.