MADAME BUTTERFLY to Offer $15 Student Rush Tickets

Opera Orlando will open its second decade this weekend with Puccini's Madame Butterfly, and all three performances in Steinmetz Hall offer $15 STUDENT RUSH tickets. The tickets are available at the Bill & Mary Darden Box Office at Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts (445 S. Magnolia Avenue, Orlando) up to two hours before each performance. Students and faculty members from any educational institution may purchase up to two $15 rush tickets per student or faculty ID shown. Performances will run October 2-4.

This striking new production of Puccini's most tender opera, framed in austere, jewel-like beauty, stars soprano Yeawon Jun in the title role as Cio-Cio San. She is 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 along with Ms. Jun are mezzo-soprano Yoojin Lee as Suzuki and tenor Brad Bickhardt as Goro, with bass Zaikuan Song returning to Orlando as Bonzo. On the podium, 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, alongside stage director Rebecca A. Herman.

Cio-Cio San 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, but beneath the loveliness lies the heartbreak only Puccini could write: a pure devotion built on a promise that was never real. Ooooh… love is never what it seems.

Central to this production is a commitment to portraying Cio-Cio San's world with specificity and respect, guided by a team of cultural consultants shaping the production's staging, movement, and dress.