June 11, 2008
OTSL SEASON 32
I am the last person you’d expect to like opera. I like theater but am not partial to musicals. I don’t like heavy drama or lavish sets. Usually.
But as I soon discovered the work done by Opera Theatre of St. Louis is so interesting and of such quality that it was difficult to not be lured in.
Although it may make me a savage in some eyes to admit it, I prefer the opera in English. It’s just easier to follow and it takes a lot of the stuffy, hoity toity air out of the genre.
There are a few things I DO love about OTSL productions.
For starters the repertoire is different and diverse each season. Each seasonal program offers a very bold blend of popular favorites with daring and new pieces. Second, the on stage quality is par excellent. The performance, musical scoring, staging and costuming are fascinating. The end result is that watching it all work in syncopation is marvelous.
Before you read on you should know that OTSL makes every effort to keep their art affordable and snob free to the average Joe or Jane. The company often offers discounts, special presentations and affordable pricing in an effort to get their operas seen by as many different types of people as possible.
This of course leads me to the current (32nd) season of Opera Theatre St. Louis.
MADAME BUTTERFLY
Madame Butterfly’s standing as one of the most beloved operas stands as a testament to the resolve and tenacity of Giacomo Puccini
Puccini was a wild man. He loved fast boats, good booze and fast cars. It was his love of speed that did him in but brought him success in a roundabout way. Puccini wrote Madame Butterfly while recuperating from a nasty auto accident in 1902. This accident gave him a permanent nasty limp physically and a confidently edgy swagger artistically.
When it was first performed at La Scala in February of 1904, people hated it. Really hated it. Undaunted he tried his luck again that May for a revamped production in Brescia, Italy. In this version he tightened up the second half, creating a sleeker opera.
Madame Butterfly is based on actual events in Turn of the Century Japan. During this time it was perfectly normal for Western men to enter into temporary marriages that could easily be nullified after a 30-day absence form the male.
Out of this historical background steps a fifteen-year-old Geisha named Cio-cio-san. Cio-cio-sen, a Nagasaki girl who hails from a once wealthy family, enters into an arrangement with Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, a US Naval officer. Pinkerton has everything on his mind but a long marriage. During Act One he cunningly beguiles the young geisha for his own interests.
In an attempt to pacify her new husband Madame Butterfly renounces her religion and is eventually shunned by her family and village.
Act Two opens three years later with Pinkerton nowhere in sight. In fact he has returned to the US and taken on a ‘real’ wife named Kate. Madame Butterfly meanwhile has been left with a child and a stipend form her ‘husband.'
But despite banishment, poverty and abandonment Madame Butterfly remains resolute that her husband will come back for her and take her off to America.
Her fortunes could all change but don’t when she repeatedly refuses the hand of the wealthy Prince Yamadori. Yamadori is a persistant fellow who goes home tme after time disappointed. This sets the stage for Pinkerton’s return to Japan.
Pinkerton returns to Japan but wants nothing to do with Madame Butterfly until the American consul brings him word of her steadfast waiting. Pinkerton finally wakes up and realizes the level of devotion his geisha wife has to him and Goes to see her.
To say that she is waiting for him would be an understatement. Her aching and waiting for Pinkerton borders on the neurotic.
In the second scene of Act Two they meet again, bringing the percolating tension of the opera to a close with potent emotional resonance.
Madame Butterfly tugs on so many emotions because of the riveting turn from soprano Kelly Kaduce. Kaduce debuted in 2004’s Sister Angelica and has knocked over OTSL audiences ever since. Here she takes every small gesture and word and turns it into a powerful and intense performance. Known as a performer who inhabits her roles. With Madame Butterfly she completely cocoons herself in the part and transforms the opera.
David Pomeray is a more than suitable accomplice as Pinkerton. The duo spends most of the first act engaged in a long duet that sets the stage for the tragic events of Act Two. Pomeray helps fill in the gaps by making Pinkerton so enjoyably loathsome that you can’t help but feel affected by his equally intense performance.
Rounding out this fine ensemble are powerhouse performances from Lester Lynch as Sharpless, the American consul, and Jamie Barton as Suzuki, Cio-cio San’s loyal servant.
OTSL’s production of Madame Butterfly never tires or becomes played out because the cast never relinquishes emotional control to the audience. They clearly call the shots and deal the emotions. Thus freeing the audience from a world of night by the end of the production.
Simply put, this version of Madame Butterfly is marvelous stuff indeed.
Upcoming performances of Madame Butterfly at Opera Theatre of St. Louis
June 11, 1pm
June 13, 8pm
June 18, 1pm
June 22, 7pm
June 24, 8pm
June 28, 1pm
All performances are at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the campus of Webster University.
For more information visit www.expereinceopera.org
-Rob Levy