Review: MADAME BUTTERFLY at LA Opera

Just as with last season’s Turandot, LA Opera stands poised to battle any criticisms for presenting an oft-criticized work of the popular canon. Selected to open their 2024/2025 season is Mario Gas’ reimagining of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly which frames the entire action of the melodrama on a 1930s Hollywood soundstage and simultaneously projects a live-feed of the performance above the supertitles, bringing constant awareness to the proceedings as fictitious spectacle and invoking introspection to the active role the audience’s gaze plays in the subjugation of the title heroine. When Cio-Cio-San is first heard by Pinkerton, the audience is allowed to see her singing from the wings as her betrothed is solely enticed by her crystalline voice. The role of the spectator becomes integral to the piece in a way that invites discussion of the ways the white gaze has informed the creation and continued popularity of the work.

For all of the device’s delicious successes, framing complicated shots of singers through the geometric slats of Ezio Frigerio’s behemoth set in ways that conversely evoke the opulence of a work by MGM’s Freed unit or the subtle asymmetry of a Mizoguchi movie, both the live performance and the filmed version suffer when neither is clearly prioritized. The clean, black and white image, while often employed to capture more than can be seen on stage, just as often feels like a screensaver without purpose. Particularly during Cio-Cio-San’s overnight vigil awaiting the return of her beloved, one of the most orchestrally-dynamic moments in the score, extraneous camera movements ignore the flow of the music and detract from what should be an emotional highlight of the piece. The dense saturation of the colors in Franca Squarciapino’s costumes and Vinicio Cheli and Pablo Santiago’s lighting are wiped clean in the filmed version and, because they are designs intended to be viewed from an opera house, create lackluster textures on the screen. The projections thus evoke a daytime soap opera more than a 1930s masterpiece.

The narrative is likewise dually served and disadvantaged by the production’s conceit. As Cio-Cio-San, Karah Son plays up the light, airy youthfulness of the character, providing levity in the first two acts from which she can gracefully and tragically plummet in the third. As Goro, Rodell Aure Rosel amiably takes up the comic mantel and feels at home within a broadly silly staging. In a dastardly portrayal of B.F. Pinkerton, Jonathan Tetelman garners mixed responses to his curtain call. A swell of appreciative applause was mixed with booming ‘boo’s, highlighting the shortcoming of this adaptation. I left the theatre wondering, ‘if audiences are expected to cheer proudly for the tragic heroine and deride the American who takes advantage of her as though a villain in a pantomime, what intricacies and self-reflections are we glossing over?’. If we gloss over those complications within the libretto, assuring the audience they can engage with this opera and still feel ethical, is the continued presentation of Madame Butterfly worthwhile? As audiences continuing to engage with this opera, how do we align ourselves more with Pinkerton and his belief system than with the characters we vocally support? While calling attention to voyeurism, this production also seems to attempt to sidestep criticisms with its period framing device. Certain depths and nuances otherwise able to be mined from the libretto thus feel abruptly truncated and the emotional arch of the narrative suffers.

On opening night, the crowd favorite was Hyona Kim, who’s Suzuki was poignantly powerful within the confines of her class, race, and gender. Clad in a matronly grey apron, Kim lends a resolute realism to the grandeur of the performance. In duet, Kim and Son are a perfect pairing, sprinkling rose petals in a heart-crushingly, ill-fated attempt to welcome Pinkerton home.

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