Madama Butterfly/Glyndebourne on tour
There are two types of annual production at Glyndebourne: the main festival where you have all the trimmings of black tie formality, picnics in the gardens and tickets that go up to £250 or the tour with younger talent, less formality and tickets about 25% of the festival. Not that the tour is a cut price operation. The programme featured an interesting article on the challenges of a production which must not only conform with Glyndebourne’s stage requirements but the opera houses and theatres on tour.
Madama Butterfly was the first tour production I had seen and was not sure what to expect. I was agreeably surprised. It was also the first time this opera has been staged at Glyndebourne. Obviously with autumn setting in a picnic was out of the question so my regular opera companion and I dined at one of the restaurants, Nether Wallop. The carvery of salads, cold meats and salmon, hot roast beef or beef Wellington, desserts and cheese were well cooked and good value at £44. The car journey through autumnal Sussex countryside on a mild warm sunny day had already set a relaxed mood that no £20 taxi journey crossing London in gridlocked traffic could ever achieve. After such a supper and excellent service we were ready for the opera. The only blight was that I decided to visit the loo which serves both restaurants. There was a long queue outside the ladies whilst the right passage for the gents was taken by the elderly carefully negotiating the stairs upwards. Rather than go down the stairs and create a difficulty for the person coming in the other narrow direction I let the person move up the stairs. Behind me a irascible man complained noisily about the delay. Eventually the passage had cleared but he had stormed off. In returning to the restaurant I heard him berating the greeter about the delay and demanding to know the location of another gents. There is temptation to treat the elderly respectfully whatever the circumstances but this person was impatient, rude, selfish and intemperate.
As to the opera Karah Son met the musical and acting challenges of Madam Butterfly well. She is on stage virtually the whole opera and has to get beneath the skin of a 15 year old geisha whose family fell on hard times hoping her arranged American husband Captain Pinkerton whom she loves will deliver her and their little boy a new life. For him in his words she is a plaything and he a swaggering Yank that can indulge without responsibility or feeling. When he returns 4 years on to find Butterfly and his child he is with an American wife and Butterfly’s only way out is a tragic one. It’s a compelling story and today they are still sex tourists in the Far East looking for young flesh. It also brings in the clash of cultures which the production stresses by setting the story in the fifties where Japanses GI brides were quite an issue.
I thought it a lacked great aria but the story line, beautiful sets and above all the orchestration of John Wilson better known and highly acclaimed for the American songbook of classic musicals, were all of the highest standards you expect of Glyndebourne. Captain Pinkerton (Matteo Lippi) did not quite have the swagger of the role but interestingly enough when he took his bow at the end he was met with widespread booing for his treatment of Butterfly so he provoked a reaction.
When I first moved to Sussex some of my London friends wondered how long I would withstand the pull of London. Both my companion and I are ex-Londoners. We both savour the cultural life of Sussex which contains the best theatre outside London at Chichester and world class opera house that exports operatic productions like Madama Butterfly.
