| MADAMA BUTTERFLY
By Giacomo Puccini
Marking the 100th anniversary since Puccini’s tragic heroine first took the stage, this season we are presenting ‘Madama Butterfly’. Set in the region of Nagasaki and rumoured to be based on events that actually occurred there in the1890s, ‘Madama Butterfly’ is a sad tale of innocence betrayed.
Upon his arrival in Japan, the callous yet dashing US Naval officer, BF Pinkerton, becomes infatuated with the fifteen year-old, Cio-Cio San (Madama Butterfly). Cognisant of her fragility, but not content with life unless he makes her one of his ‘flowers on every shore’, Pinkerton sets out to win her affection. The stage for the tragedy is set. We meet the beautiful Cio-Cio San, a geisha - fragile, unworldly, and in love with the handsome sailor. She deceives herself, despite abundant warnings, as to Pinkerton's motives.
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Madama Butterfly is one of the the most poignant operas ever composed with music that truly captures the feelings of love yearning and pain.
Sung in Italian |
| Cast includes: |
| Cio Cio San | Nancy Yuen |
| BF Pinkerton | John Marshall |
| Sharpless | Robert Davies |
| Suzuki | Jeanette Ager |
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| Conductor | Fraser Goulding |
Please click to view Singers' biographies
Synopsis
Act 1
Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton of the US Navy is to contract a marriage with a local girl Cio-Cio-San, known as ‘Butterfly’. For him it is purely a pastime, but as the American Consul Sharpless warns, for her it is something different - Butterfly has renounced her religion, which brings down the wrath of her uncle, the Bonze or High Priest.
Act 2
Three years have passed since Pinkerton was called away from Japan on duty. Butterfly, who has a young son by him, faithfully assures her doubting maid, Suzuki, that ‘one fine day’ he will return. Sharpless cannot bring himself to tell Butterfly, who is urged unsuccessfully by Goro, the marriage broker, to marry the wealthy Yamadori. She reflects on ending her life when a gun salute is heard from the harbour: Pinkerton’s ship. Butterfly, her son, and Suzuki keep vigil by the window.
Act 3
Next morning Suzuki has persuaded Butterfly to get some sleep. Soon Pinkerton and Sharpless enter. Suzuki realises the bitter truth and Pinkerton, full of remorse, leaves the house in a daze. Butterfly appears and is met by Sharpless and Pinkerton’s wife, Kate. Quietly she asks them to take a message to Pinkerton: to come for his son in half an hour. She ceremoniously stabs herself as Pinkerton arrives.
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