To be frank, the set looked tatty. Bare plywood covered with strips of black material, and an equally cobbled-together-looking raised stage platform with rough, canvas edging didn’t bode well. But Neil Irish’s design for Opera Holland Park’s latest open air outing, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, had a surprise up its sleeve, for once the chorus had pulled down the drapes we were left with a wooden screen running the whole length of the stage with a beautiful striation painted across the middle. We were in Japan and we were on a fault line: a colonial one.
Butterfly is, in the great tradition of opera, a simple story of woe, thwarted hope, and death. Pinkerton (Joseph Wolverton), an American naval officer in late 19th Century Nagasaki, wants a wife. Marriage broker Goro (Robert Burt) suggests a 15 year old geisha called Cho-Cho San, the Butterfly of the title (Anne Sophie Duprels), whom he promptly pays for and weds. Butterfly is happy with her middle-aged American hubby and takes her vows seriously, even when Pinkerton forbids her from seeing her family, while he confesses to American consul Sharpless (David Stephenson) that he plans one day to take a ‘proper’ American wife and regards his marriage to Butterfly as one of convenience while he’s in Japan. Yes, he’s the archetypal girl-in-every-port sort of tar.
When Pinkerton sails off into the distance, promising Butterfly he’ll be back soon, she waits and pines. Cut to two years later in Act II and a child has appeared. Butterfly still waits, brushing off suggestions from Sharpless that Pinkerton has done the dirty on her, and he can’t quite bring himself to tell her that Pinkerton now has that ‘proper’ American wife.
But wait! There’s a ship in the harbour! And it’s Pinkerton’s ship! He’s back! But unfortunately for Butterfly, with his brand spanking new American wife. The cad.
Director Paul Higgins has pared down the set and props (a flag and a chair) for this sparse production. The costumes are authentic, and I particularly loved Goro’s frock coat and skirts which I’d wear at the drop of a hat. Butterfly is in a startlingly white obi for the first half, symbolically changing to western gear after her marriage, but Pinkerton’s naval garb looked shabby to my eyes, as did the mishmash of get-ups that the chorus donned, including some truly horrible wigs.
Namiko Gahier-Ogawa has coached the cast in traditional Japanese movements, used mostly by Duprels in the first act, but the effect is static, all stiff-handed chops and mystical offstage looks. It’s a useful, if rather obvious, pointer in the latter half, when she has adopted Pinkerton’s western lifestyle to tell when she’s really stressed as she goes all ‘choppy’ again. It comes over as slightly patronising to the audience, as if we couldn’t guess her emotions from her voice and words alone.
Duprels’ voice is wonderfully rich, although I’m no fan of her acting. She acts, stops acting, thinks about singing, sings, stops singing, thinks about acting, ad infinitum. It’s bitty, with no flow, although her stillness in the crucial ‘vigil’ scene is admirable.
A warm, buttery light falls over the stage for most of the performance, which compensates a little for the bareness of the set and warms the production up, as does Pinkerton’s stout, fatherly figure and rounded voice, but the overall effect is still a little cold, as is the chemistry between the spouses.
Despite its faults Madama Butterfly at Holland Park is still a good catch. Soaring music that everyone will recognise plus a wonderful posh London park setting is a combination that can’t really be beaten. And you know you’re in Poshland when the only sounds you can hear are opera and peacocks. Beats London Road Poundland any day!
What: Madama Butterfly
Where: Holland Park, London
When: July 2 & 4, 7.30pm
Tickets: £12 – £67.50
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