Metropolitan Opera broadcasts continue on Classical 90.5 at 10:00 a.m. this Saturday, April 2, with a performance of Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. The librettists for Madama Butterfly, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, had also collaborated with the composer on his previous two operas, Tosca and La Bohème. Giacosa, a dramatist, was responsible for the stories and Illica, a poet, worked primarily on the words themselves.
The title character of Madama Butterfly, a young Japanese geisha who clings to the belief that her arrangement with a visiting American naval officer is a loving and permanent marriage, is one of the defining roles in opera. The story triggers ideas about cultural and sexual imperialism for people far removed from the opera house, and film, Broadway, and popular culture in general have riffed endlessly on it. The lyric beauty of Puccini’s score, especially the music for the thoroughly believable lead role, has made Butterfly timeless.
Puccini achieved a new level of sophistication with his use of the orchestra in this score, with subtle colorings and sonorities throughout. But the opera rests squarely on the performer of the title role: on stage for most of the time, Cio-Cio-San is the only character that experiences true (and tragic) development. The singer must convey an astounding array of emotions and characteristics, from ethereal to fleshly to intelligent to dreamy-bordering-on-insane, to resigned in the final scene.
The opera takes place in the Japanese port city of Nagasaki at the turn of the last century, at a time of expanding American international presence. Japan was hesitantly defining its global role, and Nagasaki was one of the country’s few ports open to foreign ships. Temporary marriages for foreign sailors were not unusual.
The performance will run approximately three hours and forty minutes. Karel Mark Chichon conducts.
THE CAST
Cio-Cio-San: Kristine Opalais
Suzuki: Maria Zifchak
Pinkerton: Roberto Alagna
Sharpless: Dwayne Croft
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