Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly closes the season for both the Opéra de Montréal and the Opéra de Québec. This major success with the public, which will fill the rooms to the point that in Montreal we add a performance, is now taken with a grain of salt by North American institutions.
It’s Saturday that a Canadian Madame Butterfly will take the stage in Montreal. The inhabitants of Quebec will wait another week before seeing an Italian in the show programmed by Jean-François Lapointe.
Novelty
In Montreal, the Butterfly announced is a new show. The traditional, utilitarian production, made to fill the coffers of the institution without too much trouble, was seen in 1988, 1993, 2002 and 2015. Notable exception, the superb show imported from Opera Australia, rich and poetic , with Hiromi Omura, in 2008, remains unforgettable. Observing the recurrence of the work, we note in passing that we could program seasons almost by computer since Puccini’s opera returns with clockwork regularity, every eight years on average.
New Butterfly, therefore, entrusted to Stephanie Havey, an artist at the beginning of her career who has notably staged works in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Michigan and Arizona. Among the elements unveiled by the Opéra de Montréal, we are told in the words of Madame Havey that, in the first scene, “a young Asian child discovers, while reading Madame Butterfly, his Japanese origins; Kate Pinkerton tells her adopted son about the events that brought him to America.
The title role will be sung by Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury, opposite tenor Matthew White. Mezzo-soprano Lauren Segal will be Suzuki, and Hugo Laporte will play Sharpless. In short, this “almost entirely Canadian” cast, musically led by Pedro Halffter, will transport audiences to Nagasaki, Japan, at the start of the 20th century.e century.
In Quebec, presented from Saturday May 13, Madame Butterfly will be directed by Clelia Cafiero and directed by François Racine, who presided over the last series of performances, in 2015, in Montreal. The scenography is by Michel Baker, technical director of the Opéra de Québec for several decades, who had mastered the challenges of Don Pasquale. Francesca Tiburzi and MyungJoo Lee will share the role of Cio-Cio San, while Éric Laporte will sing Pinkerton, Lysianne Tremblay will be Suzuki and Phillip Addis will play Sharpless.
In North America, we tend to be cautious with culturally specific works that can be perceived as “appropriate” or conveying remarks now judged above all to be colonialist. Six houses (Atlanta, San Francisco, New Orleans, Sarasota, Trenton and West Palm Beach) still scheduled Butterfly this season in the United States. It will be noted that the three most important have opted for Asian singers, the three most modest choosing local artists wearing make-up. In their “traditional” approach to opera, Quebec institutions are a relative exception. Will remain to gauge the shows.