DANIELA DESSÌ WILL ONCE AGAIN BE MADAMA BUTTERFLY

from Nagasaki to Ancona, five different Cio-Cio Sans for as many editions in just one year and a precise idea of the character

 

(libretto)

 

Daniela Dessì, soprano of international fame, is set to be Cio Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, whose début in Ancona is scheduled for 10^th December. The opera will benefit from Beni Montresor’s historical staging, and will be directed by Renata Scotto, another great soprano linked to Puccini’s work since the beginning of her career (see previous article). We have joined Daniela Dessì in Palermo for a long and very pleasant conversation about Madama Butterfly.

 

“I’m here in Palermo - says the soprano, - to sing Madama Butterfly in fact, under Stefano Vizioli’s direction, yet another production in a year that will have seen me interpret Puccini’s opera five times altogether. Besides, I am the first western soprano to have sung Madama Butterfly in Japan, in 2001 in Nagasaki with a production from Torre del Lago-Festival Puccini, which then stopped off in Tokyo, Kobe and several other important Japanese towns. The Japanese are always enthusiastic when western singers go and perform in their country. They were really pleased, they said I looked like a real Japanese woman, bless them! They love our “westernness” very much and I try to create a character that is a blend of Puccini’s deep, passionate music and the Japanese world”.

 

Can you tell us a little more about your interpretation of the character?

 “It has been very useful to me to be Madama Butterfly, because we singers are sometimes associated with certain stereotypes in our movements. It is very important for us to filter our western singing through the oriental way of making gestures because we can create a balance between physical movement and singing. The difficulty lies in the fact that, when we sing, we westerners use the whole body with rather broad gestures, while the Japanese use very simple gestures when they move, which derive from their traditions, from their way of living, of posing, and of dressing even. It is not that easy to keep to their way of seeing things, the body must adapt itself to limited movements. In the end, though, one reaches a new balance between body and voice. It is a big challenge to resist helping yourself with those big gestures that singers use in other operas, different from this one.

Cio Cio-San is a strong character, but weak at the same time. I have always been convinced that she is in a way Japan’s Desdemona: she, too, would like to elope with a man from a different civilization. At the time, when the borders were opened, the idea of a Japanese woman marrying a westerner must have seemed completely absurd. This is why I see her as Desdemona, eloping with the Moor. A strong, determined woman, with a clear concept of life and very wide horizons. She is also a straightforward girl, who believes in what she does, while she is growing into a woman. Considering her maturity from the moment she steps onto the stage, the 15 or 18 years of age of a Japanese woman at that time are probably the equivalent of a 25 or 30-year-old modern woman. And, in the space of two and a half acts, she becomes a very tragic, mature woman, who unfortunately meets a horrible fatal end. I can feel the great strength of her love for the man of her life and her son”.

 

A few comments on the vocal characteristics?

 “Vocally, she is one of the most demanding characters of the soprano repertoire as far as the vocal and orchestral interweaving is concerned. We move from the first lyrical act to a final tragic act and, in between, there is the development of an opera which is now usually done in two acts instead of three. Let’s say that, with the exception of ten minutes, the protagonist is always on stage”.

 

How do you think you will work with Renata Scotto? 

 “I have already done a concert with Mrs Scotto in Venice. She was a great Madama Butterfly and I am looking forward to working together on this project, because we have so many things to talk about. 

Mrs Scotto has huge experience of this role, and it will be good to talk about it and put together a character who will be partly mine and partly hers”.

 

Inside an essential scenography created by Beni Montresor...

“Yes, it is a very clear, essential scenography. This is nice, because what Madama Butterfly sings, from the second act onwards, is in my opinion the fruit of her imagination. She imagines that her man is going to come back and will never leave her again; that, once he sees the child, he will stay with her. She dreams of a rose-tinted world, which will then turn black. I like productions that focus on the character itself rather than on the scenography or a traditional relationship between the characters. I think that she may also be very detached from the world in which she lives”.

 

In the final scene of Montresor’s scenography, the background drape which represented the wall of the apartment will become the suicidal protagonist’s shroud.

 “The Torre del Lago production was also very essential, with wonderful lighting and sculptures by the Japanese artist Kan Iasuda. It is interesting to play on symbolisms – the Japanese have always relied on symbols. In my opinion, the traditional choices in Madama Butterfly look a little tedious, linked too closely to pompous music. The opera should instead be based on the idea of the games played by our imagination, in a doll’s world, which, in the end, falls to pieces”.

 

By closing the inaugural season of the recently re-opened Le Muse, you will become part of the history of this theatre.

“I am really flattered. When I was asked to do Madama Butterfly, I immediately accepted. I sang in Ancona at the beginning of my career - in a concert about twenty years ago - and I have always wondered why such an important town did not have the theatre it deserved. As for history, I do hope to become a part not just of the Teatro delle Muse’s history, but, more generally, of musical history on the whole. I am not being presumptuous in saying this; I try to give my best performance in every single theatre I perform in, to leave some good memories; and, even more so, when the theatre has been closed for a long time, I like to give the audience the satisfaction that the hall has been re-opened in the best possible way”.

 

Your début was in Pergolesi’s La serva padrona, a great musician of the Marche. You have sung in the most important opera-linked sites in our region.

 “My début was in 1978, I had started at the conservatory three years beforehand and an opportunity came up for the ‘Opera giocosa’ conducted by a cousin of mine who knew he had a would-be opera singer in the family; so I began by interpreting that role and I haven’t stopped since. I sang at the Sferisterio for MacerataOpera in a very beautiful edition of Turandot in ’97, directed by Ugo De Ana, - a rapport which we have since tried to re-establish, but which I have never been able to repeat on account of other engagements. We now have a very important project for the Sferisterio, which I cannot discuss yet. But I can say that next month I will be awarded the Gigli d’Oro in Recanati. I believe it is the first time that the prize is awarded to a soprano… unless they have mistaken me for a tenor, but I don’t think so. This, too, gives me great satisfaction. And I have also sung at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro on a number of occasions”.

 

What are your plans for the immediate future?

 “Tosca in Vienna, Andrea Chénier in Turin and Venice, a début in Seville with Manon Lescaut, Adriana Lecouvrer in Naples, Aida in Barcelona, again Tosca at the Scala in Milan, another début in Rome next November with Francesca da Rimini… If you want, I can go on as far as 2006”.

 

Thank you, that will do for now, just to give readers some idea as to your future dazzling career.

 

Maria Manganaro