My wife and I went to see Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly at Lyric Opera on Saturday evening and I’m sad to report that it was probably the one of the most misguided stagings I’ve ever seen. The performances were good enough with soprano Karah Son’s Cio-cio-san (Butterfly) and baritone Zachary Nelson’s Sharpless (the U. S. consul) particular standouts. The costuming was lovely. The orchestra was great. Puccini’s music, as usual, was glorious.
What made this production awful was director Matthew Ozawa’s revisionist high concept production. I’m not opposed to revisionist productions on principle. I’ve seen some good, e.g. As You Like It set in the 1890s, Rigoletto—staged in a men’s club, and some bad, e.g. Flying Dutchman in which Senta does not sacrifice her life for the Dutchman.
In this production a T-shirt clad modern Pinkerton escapes from his less-than-perfect marriage into a virtual reality 19th century Japan and VR Butterfly. Only Pinkerton is aware of this. My objection to this device is that it completely eliminates the stakes involved for the characters. Butterfly has no agency—her actions are meaningless; there is no pathos. Pinkerton becomes a victim rather than the cad he is. This design concept literally tore the heart from what is normally a very moving opera.
I’m not entirely sure what Mr. Ozawa was trying to accomplish. Did he object to Puccini’s lack of knowledge or connection with 19th century Japan? That is suggested in the Director’s Notes in the program. That would be to reject art itself. Every work of art springs from the imagination of the artist. Wagner had never been to Valhalla (Die Walküre). Verdi knew little of ancient Egypt (Aida). da Vinci did not witness The Last Supper. That did not diminish any of their works. This production doesn’t reinterpret the opera. It negates it.
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
Of course, who is to say what is real and what is fantasy in any “Madama Butterfly” at any point in the opera’s history? The production will strike some as having one’s cake and eatingt it, or, if we want to mix metaphors, as bait and switch. But this is, to my mind, a consistently potent and challenging evenging, which I mean asa compliment.
Lawrence A. Johnson, Chicago Classical Music Review
Ozawa claims his “boldly relevant” production “rescues the opera’s narrative” by employing “an entirely female [and] Japanese design collective,” which solves the problem of the story being seen “through the lens of a white man, Pinkerton.” Finally Ozawa professes his love for Puccini’s opera yet modestly states that the opera has “made me, as an Asian American, feel ostracized, and I have felt a duty to reclaim its narrative.”
It takes a certain brand of jaw-dropping hubris and solipsism to cast oneself in the role of the courageous hero who will “rescue” an operatic masterpiece from itself. How did millions of audience members ever enjoy Puccini’s opera before Matthew Ozawa came along?
I hate to break it to the director, but It’s not about you!! Nobody buys a ticket to see Butterfly because the stage director is half-Japanese or to see him work out his personal identity issues onstage. And no one in the audience cares about your background, biography, where you grew up, or why an opera makes you feel sad and neglected.
Thank goodness for Mr. Johnson’s review. I was beginning to think that opera criticism was dead. Today I have seen multiple articles on multiple subjects, the common theme of which is that everything is a videogame, nothing has any consequences, choices are not important. I don’t think this is an accident.
