United Kingdom Puccini, Madama Butterfly: Soloists, Refrain and Orchestra of the Ukrainian Opera and Ballet Theatre, Kyiv / Vasyl Vasylenko (conductor). Cliffs Pavilion, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, 5.5.2024. (JPr)
Creatives:
Director – Ellen Kent
Firm supervisor and Stage director – Victor Donos
Lighting designer/Operator – Valeriu Cucarschi
Refrain mistress – Kateryna Kondratenko-Savienkova
Forged:
Cio-Cio San – Alyona Kistenyova
Pinkerton – Davit Sumbadze
Sharpless – Vitalii Cebotari
Suzuki – Natalia Matveeva
The Bonze – Valeriu Cojocaru
Goro – Yevhenii Vaskiv
The Commissioner – Daniil Buchka
Prince Yamadori – Nicolae Cebanu
Kate Pinkerton – Anastasiia Blokha
Sorrow – Frankie Phillips
2024 is the centenary of the dying of composer Giacomo Puccini and there’s no scarcity of performances of Madama Butterfly. Amongst many others, there have already been excessive profile performances at Covent Backyard and the Met; with the opera additionally on account of take flight in all corners of the world this yr. Among the best should have been Ellen Kent’s latest Madama Butterfly whose forty second (!) and remaining efficiency of its Spring tour came about on the Cliffs Pavilion.
I wrote not too long ago how Kent’s Carmen (evaluation right here) ‘gives a completely pleasing evening on the opera for audiences because it continues its UK tour, and the tickets costs are additionally very affordable. It’s a good, trustworthy, entertaining try at doing all it must do – inform the story clearly, permit the singers to do their finest and make good use of the area obtainable.’ Typically ‘pleasing’ could be a debatable phrase for tales the place one girl is brutally murdered by an abusive ex-lover and now, in Butterfly, a barely pubescent woman is sexually exploited, made pregnant, abandoned, betrayed and dies by her personal hand. Let’s additionally not overlook that now we have all of the vainglorious toasting in Butterfly – nonetheless ironic Puccini would possibly deliberately or in any other case have been – to the greatness of the America!
Since each the latest New York and London performances deserted a lot of the well-publicised criticism of Madama Butterfly’s Orientalism (the place Jap cultures are portrayed by way of a Western eyes), there can’t be any disapproval now of getting Puccini’s Japanese characters portrayed by white performers. Certainly, the extraordinarily informative memento brochure goes to nice pains to clarify how Puccini ‘spent his Butterfly interval virtually turning himself Japanese, researching the nation’s native people melodies, trying to seize the sample of Japanese intonation, and exploring the sonorities supplied by a number of the percussion household’s ever-expanding numbers. The outcomes are a always shifting chiaroscuro of native colors: a really haunting rating’. Certainly it’s!
The curtain rises and we’re clearly – as we must be – in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1904. We’ll watch Cio-Cio San (from the Japanese for Butterfly) marry Pinkerton, a US naval officer. She is in love, while at first he’s in lust, and though his emotions deepen through the first act, particularly when she is shunned by her household for altering her faith, Pinkerton nonetheless shortly abandons her (not understanding she is carrying his baby) to return dwelling and marry an American girl.
Ellen Kent’s ultra-traditional manufacturing is vibrantly vibrant: (in fact) there may be a lot cherry blossom and completely centre stage of an evocative Japanese backyard – with the tinkling sound of water – is a minka, a Japanese home with sliding paper doorways. They’re used with nice impact to permit placing silhouettes which illustrate sure vital moments of the unfolding drama. (Although no try is made to indicate the ‘American dwelling’ Cio-Cio San suggests she has created for Pinkerton in Act II.) Equally gorgeous are the flowery, typically pastel-shaded costumes (together with because the publicity suggests ‘vintage wedding ceremony kimonos from Japan’) for the fan-wielding refrain, which distinction with Cio-Cio San in pure white.
Alyona Kistenyova’s portrayal of the tragic heroine grew because the opera proceeded and she or he acted very spiritedly at all times making an attempt to be true to the character; and it was virtually potential to consider her because the teenage (15-year-old) Cio-Cio San. Her singing gained in heat after her entrance and displayed a cultured artistry, with elegant tone and beautiful phrasing. The depth of her character’s vulnerability and despair was plain to see through the second act which was the place Kistenyova was at her dramatic finest.
In his thankless position because the villain Pinkerton – thankless additionally as a result of British audiences will boo him in pantomime-fashion no matter how effectively the singer sings – as a great as Davit Sumbadze’s Don José was in Carmen he was very good as Pinkerton. Sumbadze has a sturdy tenor voice and stentorian high notes allied to moments of innate lyricism. How good too was the wealthy mezzo-soprano voice of Natalia Matveeva as Suzuki (Cio-Cio San’s fearful maid) and Vitalii Cebotari’s eloquent baritone as Nagasaki’s equally involved US consul, Sharpless. They had been very effectively supported by Yevhenii Vaskiv (the avaricious marriage-broker Goro), Valeriu Cojocaru (as Cio-Cio San’s uncle, the Bonze, who curses her), Nicolae Cebanu (as the rich Prince Yamadori keen to marry the abandoned Cio-Cio San) and Anastasiia Blokha (as Kate, Pinkerton’s American bride).
Reiterating a few of what I wrote within the Carmen evaluation: it was so very poignant to see everybody stay on their toes – most had given the opera a standing ovation on the finish anyway – for the Ukrainian Nationwide Anthem ringing out by way of the auditorium of the Cliffs Pavilion. As soon as once more, it was a shifting second of collective assist for that nation’s ongoing struggles. Below the banner of the Ukrainian Opera and Ballet Theatre Kyiv, a multinational solid of principals, an especially valiant, but modest-sized, refrain and orchestra – all greater than enough to their duties – did Madama Butterfly and Puccini proud. From first notes until the final ones, Vasyl Vasylenko (inventive director of the Opera and Ballet Theatre Kyiv) performed with brisk tempi, pliancy and to benefit from all of the emotional highlights in Puccini’s inherently dramatic rating.
Jim Pritchard
Discover details about future Ellen Kent excursions by clicking right here.
