Last Friday night my wife and I attended the last opera in our Lyric Opera subscription for this year: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. The production was Hal Prince’s sublime production which I’ve seen for, what is it, twenty years now. You can see pictures of the gorgeous set designs here. This production is well worth seeing for its own sake.
Sylvie Valayre sang Cio-Cio San and Roberto Aronica sang Pinkerton. They were vocally adequate but their acting was below par. While each might been okay individually they simply did not click. By comparison Kim Josephson’s nicely sung and acted Sharpless came very close to dominating the show. When you realize how greatly Cio-Cio San dominates Madama Butterfly you can see I’m really saying something here.
I just don’t get the Lyric management. Our last two productions–Madama Butterfly and Lucia di Lammermoor–were simply not worthy of a world-class opera company (I’ll post more about Lucia later). And they’re staging The Ring next season!
There’s only one reason for any company to expend the money and energy necessary to mount a complete Ring: to demonstrate that they are, in fact, a world-class company.
To offset this achievement with what were essentially student productions of Madama Butterfly and Lucia simply confounds understanding.
Dave –
We saw the Pirates of Penzance a few weeks ago. Other than the wonderful staging, the light opera didn’t do much for me.
Wished we had seen Faust … but that’s when I was in the midst of my surgeries and recovery.
Don