Anna Harvey / Arvostelut

Over the last few years I have found Madam Butterfly the most intriguing of Puccini’s operas. It displays very powerfully his superb judgement of dramatic tension and pace and his mastery as a manipulator of an audience’s emotions. In addition it is, in both formal and stylistic terms, especially ambitious, even if doesn’t always fulfil those ambitions. The cast was somewhat patchy. Mark Stone’s Sharpless was admirable – well sung and acted, a convincing portrait of an honest and decent man, appalled by the behaviour and attitude of his compatriot Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and genuinely respectful of the Japanese way of life. As Pinkerton, Leonardo Caimi proved to have an attractive voice but, not surprisingly, made little of this psychologically and emotionally shallow character. I struggle to recall any tenor who has ever really convinced me that Pinkerton is genuinely filled with remorse even at the close of the opera, so it would be unkind to complain that Caimi failed to do so. The Suzuki of Anna Harvey was quietly impressive, encompassing well a real range of emotions; she was a clear and firm, almost choric, presence, whether identifying emotionally with Cio-Cio-San or frustrated by her mistress’s refusal to see or acknowledge the truth. The Yamadori of Neil Balfour made relatively little impression and was somewhat on the light side in vocal terms. Tom Randle’s Goro was suitably oleaginous. As The Bonze, Keel Watson was an impressive stage presence with a powerful voice, but with the absence, in this production, of his Japanese context, he struggled to find a meaningful role in the narrative.

Joyce El-Khoury and Leonardo Caimi in Madam Butterfly at Wales Millennium Centre. Lindy Hume sets Puccini’s empathetic tragedy in a dystopian future with mixed results. Anna Harvey’s Suzuki and Mark Stone’s Sharpless are in the top league.