Perth Festival: The magnificent and problematic Madama Butterfly - review

Puccini�s Madama Butterfly is a damning narrative of western colonialism, but it�s a challenge for any director tackling this material in 2015 to keep the production from descending into Orientalist kitsch, writes Alison Croggon.

Giacomo Puccini�s Madama Butterfly inspires me with so many contradictory feelings. It�s regarded, deservedly, as one of the major operas of European Romanticism. When performed with passion, as it is in this Perth Festival remount of Anthony Minghella�s 2005 production, it�s all but impossible to resist that magnificent score, which is poised perilously, even thrillingly, on the edge of bathos, without ever quite falling in.

At the same time, it�s an exemplary work of Orientalism, written in the wake of the craze for all things Japanese that overtook Europe after the opening of Japan to the West in 1853. Puccini based his opera on a play by David Belasco, itself based on a popular short story by a Philadelphia lawyer called John Luther Long. Librettists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica considerably improved on their sources to create a work that still has a striking modernity in how effectively it balances dramatic action with lyrical moments of spine-tingling beauty.

And it is, of course, an opera which, like almost every opera, generates its emotional power from the beautiful suffering of women. Cio Cio San (Mary Plazas) is the ultimate betrayed heroine, waiting for her American husband Pinkerton (Adam Diegel) to return after their summer of love in Nagasaki, which has left her with a tiny son.

With the help of the consul Sharpless (Jonathan Summers), naval lieutenant Pinkerton effectively buys 15 year old Cio Cio, whose wealthy family has fallen on hard times. Pinkerton is the picture of brash, hungry United States enterprise, careless of any damage that he leaves behind him: he assumes that Cio Cio will forget him as he will forget her. But, as Sharpless warns him, Cio Cio �means it�. When he returns three years later with his �real� American wife, he takes what is his, his son. He is conscience stricken by what he has done to Cio Cio, but also cowardly; he won�t meet her, leaving others to do his dirty business. He can�t face the damage he has done, but he does it anyway.

In contemporary terms, Pinkerton is an abusive paedophile, a sex tourist exploiting the girl-bride whose innocent beauty fills him with arias of lust. Cio Cio�s inability to accept his brutal abandonment is reinforced by her family�s rejection after she converts to her husband�s religion: isolated, poverty stricken, forced to relinquish her child, in the end the only way she can reclaim her honour is by killing herself with the same sword her father used to commit suicide.

Even as Puccini tells it, it�s a damning narrative of western colonialism; but it is simultaneously an expression of that same colonialism. And its glorious aestheticisation of female suffering is as central to its power as its Orientalism. Cio Cio is only ever a victim: she is the fantasy of the submissive and infantalised Asian wife, who only attends to her duty, who is long suffering and loyal, who has no agency of her own except her self-destruction. And there�s no escaping it: this woman�s anguish is the tragic grain, the catch of real pain that feeds into its emotional potency.

Anthony Minghella�s production, directed for this revival by Sarah Tipple, amplifies all these qualities at once. The West Australian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Parry, renders the score with vigour and intelligence, and the singers are remarkable. Mary Plazas�s Un bel di sent goosebumps down my spine. The scenes between the maid Suzuki (Maria Zifchak) and Cio Cio are among the best in the show, and Jonathan Summers is a brilliant Sharpless. Adam Diegel as Pinkerton makes him a human who betrays himself with greed and weakness, rather than the one-dimensional monster he could easily be.

Michael Levine�s set is steeply raked, rising up to a horizon over which the performers step into visibility. It�s sumptuously lit by Peter Mumford, and ingeniously exploits shijo screens moved by dancers to create fluid, intimate spaces. And like Handspan Theatre�s 1980s adaptation Cho Cho San, directed by Geoff Hook, this production uses Bunraku puppets (manipulated by Blind Summit Theatre) to represent both Cio Cio and her son, Sorrow, which again winches up the emotional power.

I found myself oscillating between loving and hating the design. The opening image, as Cio Cio appears in silhouette over the horizon of the stage, is stunning, and the durational scene at the end of Act II where Cio Cio, Suzuki and Sorrow wait all night for Pinkerton, is achieved with astonishing delicacy. And yet no clich� is left unturned: pink petals twinkling down from the flies during the wedding, parasols, lengths of silk fabric, paper lanterns at the mention of the moon, over-the-top costumes that at times reminded me of nothing so much as The Mikado. At its most simple, the staging is breathtaking: and then, so easily, it turns into blatantly Orientalist kitsch.

I can�t take away from Mary Plazas�s performance. As Cio Cio she is outstanding: fragile, passionate, her voice a marvel. But in 2015, can we really get away with yellowface? And is it really possible to stage Madama Butterfly as if its problematic nature isn�t, well, a problem?

- Alison Croggon

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