Madama Butterfly, San Francisco Opera

Butterfly's Entrance

Photo by Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

I feel like every time I see or read about Puccini's Madama Butterfly at San Francisco Opera, a new production is involved. I remember four or five over the last 30 years, which is something, considering that I haven't even seen the opera in fifteen years.

I took myself to the new SFO production, a co-production with Tokyo Nikikai Opera Foundation, Semperoper Dresden, and Det Kongelige Teater, Copenhagen, for a few reasons: I was skeptical about the concept behind the production and I actively wanted to hear music director Eun Sun Kim and the singers.

Weeeelllll. I wound up feeling that I might as well have stayed home, which you can read as I could have swapped my ticket for yet another performance of Die Frau ohne Schatten, an opera I don't get to see every three years. Kim was fine, and the singers were fine, except that there was no chemistry at all between soprano Karah Son and tenor Michael Fabiano, and Son sang well but without any special insights, either musically or dramatically. The other primary singers were also fine: perennial baritone Lucas Meachem and the excellent mezzo Hyona Kim. The latter was fantastic in Dream of the Red Chamber and I'd like to see her in more leading roles. Also notable was Kidon Choi's Prince Yamadori; he's got a great voice and commands the stage.

The production....well...the concept is that young Trouble, age around two in the opera, has grown up and discovered what happened to Cio-Cio-San. He reads some letters and goes back in time (I guess?) where he observes everything that happened between Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San. That means that he is pretty much always on stage.

This just does not work. His presence is distracting and doesn't add a thing to the main narrative. Amon Miyamoto's direction in general lacks insight and doesn't have much to say. I think that Kate Pinkerton was on stage a lot more than usual.

I found the production cheap looking: it has about two pieces of furniture and some curtains that fly around the stage and act as the screen for some projections. And that horse statue that Prince Yamadori rides in on? I started laughing because I would have sworn it was recycled from Francesca Zambello's Luisa Miller. It's not - I checked production photos - but the concept certainly is. I have no idea what would have been wrong with having him just walk on stage or be carried in a sedan chair, but what do I know? He was dressed in a Western-style military uniform, so maybe that was it.

Seen from above - I was in the dress circle - it was mighty dull. It looks better in production photos than it looked from the dress circle. Compare with last year's Orpheus ed Eurydice, which was spare but absolutely gorgeous and wonderful to look at. I admit to one minor exception: I loved the dress worn by Mikayla Sager as the young Kate.

The other thing I scratched my head about was Cio-Cio-San's knee-length dress? slip? that she's wearing through a lot of Acts 2 and 3. What the actual: I am not an expert in women's turn-of-the-20th-century undergarments, but I know enough that the outfit registered as wrong.

I'll probably go another 15 years before I see Butterfly again. I'm sorry to have missed Liana Haroutounian in the title role, but the December, 2007 noon matinee with Patricia Racette and Brandon Jovanovich, cond. Donald Runnicles, was one of the greatest performances I have ever seen of anything. I dug up Joshua Kosman's review and was relieved to see that I hadn't misremembered it.

Lastly, no amount of concept is going to fix the awfulness of the libretto: child sex trafficking (she's FIFTEEN and it's clear from the libretto that he BUYS her); fake marriage; abandonment; stealing the kid. What, you think he'll have a rough time in Japan? It's 1904! He's going to have a terrible time in American, too, and possibly get locked up in the 1940s.

Updated 7/23/23

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chron
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box ("Looking for Trouble", a most excellent headline)
• Jason Vincent Serinus, SFCV
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler