MADAME BUTTERFLY to Open at Steinmetz Hall From Opera Orlando
Opera Orlando's staging features three sopranos as part of an upcoming summer concert series.
Individual tickets are now on sale for Opera Orlando's Madame Butterfly, opening the Company's 2026-27 season with an added Saturday performance, October 2–4 at Steinmetz Hall at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. This original production frames Puccini's most tender opera in austere, jewel-like beauty — cherry blossoms, zen gardens, and vignettes of elegant byōbu folding screen painting. Beneath the loveliness, however, lies the sadness only Puccini could write: Cio-Cio San's pure devotion, built on a promise that was never real.
'What drew me to this production is the idea that beauty and heartbreak occupy the same frame, the same moment, throughout the opera,' says stage director Rebecca A. Herman, who makes her Opera Orlando debut with Madame Butterfly. 'We've built Cio-Cio San's world as a series of intimate, carefully composed, restrained stage pictures, so that the emotion has room to breathe. My goal is for the audience to fall in love with her world, and then feel the full weight of what happens inside it. To create this take on Puccini's masterpiece, with a company this ambitious and a cast so engaged with telling this story, is a genuine honor.'
Cio-Cio San (Madame Butterfly) marries an American naval officer who, after the wedding, immediately returns to the States. She waits three years, certain he will come back. But even longtime lovers of this opera are undone by what happens when he finally does.
This new staging crystallizes Japanese aesthetics and design into a minimalist landscape. The stage floor is divided into intimate, garden-like compartments, with painted screens traversing connected pathways, shaping rooms, and keeping the story moving, all beneath a canopy of white cherry blossoms. The result is a production that reflects Cio-Cio San's culture while revealing her internal world.
Soprano Yeawon Jun makes her Opera Orlando debut in the title role, singing her first Cio-Cio San, joined by tenor Isaac Hurtado as Lt. Pinkerton and Grammy Award–winning baritone and Opera Orlando general director Gabriel Preisser as Sharpless. Making their Company debuts are mezzo-soprano Yoojin Lee as Suzuki and tenor Brad Bickhardt as Goro, with bass Zaikuan Song returning to Orlando as Bonzo. The production also marks the Opera Orlando MainStage debuts of three of this season's Studio Artists: tenor Benjamin Ruiz as the Registrar, mezzo-soprano Sarah Kathryn Curtis as Kate Pinkerton, and bass-baritone David Kahng as Prince Yamadori. Conductor Kalena Bovell — the 2024 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient and the first Black woman to conduct an opera in Canada — makes her Company debut on the podium, alongside stage director Rebecca A. Herman. Together they lead a cast featuring the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in the pit and the Opera Orlando Apprentice Artists, Chorus, and Youth Company on stage.
Central to this production is a commitment to portraying Cio-Cio San's world with specificity and respect. To that end, Opera Orlando has engaged a team of consultants to guide the production's staging, movement, and dress. Production consultant Melody Chang — former executive director of the Asian Opera Alliance, who has consulted on LA Opera's Madama Butterfly — has advised on the casting approach and will be on hand to help inform the staging. Movement consultant Chiaki Yasukawa, a Japanese artist and former member of the Orlando Ballet, will bring her fluency in both Eastern and Western performance traditions to the production's physical vocabulary. Costume consultant Satomi Hirano, a Japanese artist who has consulted for Palm Beach Opera, will ensure the authenticity of the production's kimono and dress.
'The most beautiful work I get to do is collaborative, and this production is a real example of that,' says artistic director Grant Preisser. 'Melody, Chiaki, and Satomi have brought a depth of knowledge none of us could have provided alone: from how a kimono is worn, to how a body moves through this world, to the larger question of how we tell this story responsibly, honoring both Puccini and the source material. Their fingerprints are all over what audiences will see, and the production is richer and more true for their contributions.'
