There is no such thing as a moderately good performance of Madama Butterfly, or, to be more precise, it’s not possible to be slightly or rather moved by a performance. As with some of Shakespeare’s plays, and most of Wagner’s music-dramas, one is either shaken and overcome, or refrigerated and indifferent. So it’s sad to report that Glyndebourne’s first ever Butterfly, toured in 2016 but now settling on home ground, is a stolid, undistinguished affair, with some decent moments and much that seems routine and a fair amount that is worse than that.
Is it a good idea to update an opera that is set in Nagasaki to the 1950s, when the city was still reeling from the effects of the second atom bomb? Goro’s office and the tattoo parlour opposite seem to have survived; anyway, the office is where Act One is located, making a nonsense of the opening exchanges between Pinkerton and Goro, as well as introducing an element of sleaze that is the opposite of what Puccini intended.
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