PUCCINI’S BUTTERFLY SETTLES  ON THE STAGE OF TEATRO DELLE MUSE

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in the historic staging of Beni Montresor, revived by the soprano Renata Scotto and performed by Daniela Dessì

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the most famous operas, loved by the general public (and by Puccini himself). It is included in the programme of the opening opera season of Teatro delle Muse, together with Mozart’s Idomeneo and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

The production that will be on stage in Ancona on 10, 12 and 14 December 2002 made its debut at Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, was directed by Renata Scotto with costumes and oneiric scenes by  Beni Montresor. The show in Genoa was a remake of the 1995 staging directed by Montresor, who died in October 2001.

Renata Scotto, a great lady of the opera, has a forty-year career to rely on. She became a protagonist of the opera at nineteen, playing the role of Butterlfly that many years later, in 1986, also marked her debut as director at the Metropolitan in New York.  While at the Carlo Felice, Renata Scotto directed the young Romanian Adina Nitescju, who plaid the role of Cio Cio San, at Le Muse the famous Daniela Dessì will play the dramatic role of the geisha, while Maestro Renato Palumbo will conduct the orchestra.

It is an essential, non-exotic, dry, geometrically clean and gloomily clear staging, relying on the primary role of the lights that are reflected in the background and the side-scene bare translucent  surfaces. There are very few elements on stage. Even Butterfly and Pinkerton’s small sliding-panel house is just a shape on the background, placed in a middle of a small staircase, which, during the second and third act, gives access to the internal rooms, that are separated from the rest of the world by a white curtain. At the end of the opera this white curtain comes off and wraps the corpse of the protagonist under a bright white light. 

“It was not difficult to take Montresor’s clear and poetic staging, that leaves everything to the drama: a real actor does not need any tinsel to make his/her character alive. In my opinion the bareness of the scene, where everything is tidy and simple, is very close to the Japanese style” as much was stated by the director.

However something has changed if compared to the historic edition of the stage designer, director and costume designer from Verona: “I eliminated the moving bridges and the small house movements because I feel the drama as something even more intimate. However I fully agree with the rest, also including the decision to restore the narrative continuity of the drama that is divided into two acts, rather than three. I want the audience to be aware of the night spent by Cio Cio San by looking at the ocean during the instrumental intermezzo”.

In Ancona the director – soprano will work together with the famous Daniela Dessì on the role she is very familiar with, paying special attention to the well-know vocal problem of recreating the “almost spoken” effect, immediately followed by the very long sentences in the central and central-top notes. As a matter of fact Butterfly arrives on stage during the first act and does not leave anymore and never stops singing. The first act is very light, almost “belcanto”, but then the arias follow one another, up to the finale that all the singers fear. “You need a powerful and firm voice - Renata Scotto  confirms; her two records (directed by John Barbirolli in 1966 and Lorin Maazel in 1978, respectively) are still remembered for her capacity to hold the sound without attacking the role, but rather controlling it. The singer must monitor the actress”.

Based on an intimate melodic line and a musical exoticism, that also characterised Puccini’s Turandot, Madama Butterfly follows a slow progression, from the happiness to the tragedy of the fifteen year-old Japanese Cio Cio San. The young geisha is the passionate “baby bride”, as graceful as a butterfly, who is deeply touched by the life when she decides to live her own life and even change her religion, thus being disowned. The protagonist of this three-act opera is forced to tragically expiate her feelings, like all Puccini’s heroines, becoming a victim of her blind trust in the Western man. The story is set in Nagasaki, where the American marine Pinkerton (a “vagabond yankee” and a dull character, like many other Puccini’s tenors who are insignificant if compared to the great heroines)  marries Cio Cio San and abandons here immediately after. When he goes back to Japan with his new American wife, Pinkerton (Fabio Armiliato) discovers that the “butterfly” has given birth to his child. Cio Cio San entrusts her baby to Kate, the American bride, and commits suicide using the same knife that her father had used to do harikari “to die with honour when you can no longer live with honour”.

The story of the opera Madama Butterfly began in London in July 1900, when Puccini attended the opening night of Tosca, taking place for the first time beyond the Channel. On that occasion the composer from Lucca also attended  David Belasco’s single act Madame Butterfly a tragedy of Japan, the free adaptation of a short story written by John Luther Long inspired by the novel  Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti. This is when Puccini, notwithstanding his troubled love stories and car accidents, began the composition with the help of the faithful librettists Illica and Giacosa.  Madama Butterfly opening night took place on 17^th February 1904 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. It was an enormous fiasco, but was immediately counterbalanced by the incredible success in Brescia on 28^th May. In fact this success has never ended. The musical tricks that are typical of operetta, the forced exoticism and the brave colonialist terminology of the opera may be irritating, but Butterfly’s pure love and singing are a melody that is written in our genes and that Puccini has successfully put on paper thanks to his talent and sagacity.

by Maria Manganaro