Poor Butterfly – Sydney, Australia – [02/10/2015]

“She who cannot live with honour. Dies with honour”

I am told that the last time I saw Madama Butterfly I was a toddler, I’m not sure how old, you would have to ask my Mum – who told me the story so much growing up that I can almost convince myself I remember it when in fact I don’t remember a thing! Apparently I was contentedly watching something on television (it must have been a public broadcast of some kind), when I turned to her and in all seriousness asked her why the sailor didn’t want to marry the nice Japanese lady.

Mum has always said that that was one of the moments she realized she was in big trouble…

I’m digressing again…

Seeing an opera at the Sydney Opera House has been on my bucket list for years, heck, seeing anything at the Opera House has been on my bucket list! I missed The Magic Flute; I couldn’t afford Carmen, heck I couldn’t even get tickets for my favourite stand-up comedian when he played the Opera House four seasons back! So when I found out that this season Opera Australia was remounting Madama Butterfly? I didn’t care what the ticket price was (and yes, it’s true, I probably couldn’t really afford it, but I could squeak it by)…I was going.

Actually it seems that about half the ship went! But only a small handful of crew arranged to go on our own as opposed to going with a ship-escorted tour. So we got all dolled up in our nearly-best (none of us quite felt like going the full ballgown route to the opera…as much fun as that could have been) and sauntered the ten or fifteen minutes around Circular Quay – stopping multiple times along the way to take pictures and eat chocolate – from the ship to the Opera House.

We swiftly discovered that the seats we had thought were towards the rear of the theatre were quite the opposite, we were two rows from the front! Now, to me…this is a good thing, because it means I can almost fall into the stage (And since I knew I wasn’t going to understand a word of what they were saying closer was better for me), but it also meant we were two rows back from the pit…and I will forever be an admirer of the band, so being in a position where I can see “both worlds” (that is to say I can look at the stage and see the actors, and then shift my gaze down and see the dancing fingertips of the first chair violin)? That…is a recipe for perfection for me.

Of course, we were out of range of the surtitles…well, technically…they were pretty much directly above our heads, which was actually more than I expected because our tickets clearly said that we wouldn’t be able to see them at all. It did mean a bit of a sore neck though, since you catch yourself glancing upwards more often than you think you will.

Me and opera have an odd relationship, I find that as much as I would love to rapid-translate the words, I honestly don’t mind the fact that I can’t understand Italian, with a performance as strong as this, you know what’s going on. And the plot of Butterfly – though I have no idea how I knew what was going on as a child – is fairly straight forward. Girl falls in love, girl gets duped, guy is an unabashed moron, who realizes his folly way too late…girl dies tragically (that last bit is pretty common to most operas I think, I’ll admit to not knowing opera well, so I don’t know if there’s one out there where the heroine lives…but usually? No.)…it’s relatively easy to let your mind’s ear fill in the blanks; a bride’s fear on her wedding night is the same in any language, a broken heart, a broken life, all universal…English or not.

“I told you! Be wary! For she believes us!”

I have sympathy for Butterfly, I do…but at the same time, I do not. Butterfly is the ultimate example of love being blind and stupid…and overly stubborn. She is only 15 when she marries (which is sometimes difficult to believe given that no one that young could ever sing the part, but that’s not the point), and when it becomes clear to everyone around her that the marriage is a sham and that her “husband” is never returning she has every chance to legitimately salvage her life in a way that would – by the culture of her time – cause her relatively little shame. She does not do so; and she perishes at her own hand because of it.

No, the person I sympathize with the most in the whole sorry tragedy is Suzuki, Butterfly’s maid and probably best friend – who is much smarter than anyone gives her credit for and is not only responsible for trying to make something out of nothing as far as the house’s finances are concerned (“mistress, this is the last”), but has to carry the constant burden of putting on a brave face for her mistress when she can clearly see the severity of the situation, and then on top of all that is handed the responsibility of telling Butterfly that Pinkerton has abandoned her for a nice stable American wife…knowing what her reaction will probably be, because well…best friends know each other, but being completely unable to talk her out of it.

So, so tragic on so many levels…

And spectacularly acted. Despite the lack of spoken dialogue (not even recitative), this was an opera that was acted, and acted well. Only once was there an instance of an aria being sung from the middle of the stage with a pause for applause – and that was expected, because Butterfly’s aria is one of Puccini’s most famous, even non-opera people like me recognize it. Despite the fact that Butterfly is meant ot be a teenager (“fifteen, the age for sweets and games”), she is played by a much older performer, she would have to be – the part carries the whole show and she rarely leaves the stage; and this worked heavily in the production’s favour in the second act, when – three years abandoned by the man she loves – Butterfly has aged before her time. The heart wrenching moment when she fills the house with flowers anticipating Pinkerton’s return, only to wait all night and find he does not come…when a single, solitary flower tumbled from her hair…her face said everything, though her lips never moved. It was worth being so close to the stage simply to see that expression.

And, as a friend of mine who attended with us said, you have to “hand it to Puccini”, as, in its final scenes, Butterfly does not indulge in what I have oft considered the most frustrating tradition of opera. Butterfly does not sing as she dies. She takes the audience head on, lets the blade catch the light, and lets her actions speak for themselves…

The performance more than deserved the partial (though a large portion) standing ovation it received (I, personally, waited for the actress who played Suzuki to take her bow before I stood, so did several others) – though it was funny to be standing where you could see down into the pit, where all the musicians were looking up at us, some of them clearly wondering how long they were going to have to stand there…

I have the funny feeling I understood the opera better when I (apparently) watched it as a child and must have not known what I was understanding…but…I am so so very glad I was able to attend at all!

Though…I will admit…I still don’t understand…

Why didn’t the sailor want to marry the nice Japanese lady??