Madama Butterfly

Madama Butterfly, you know, is about as Japanese as lasagne. The Boston Opera Group's production, which will be presented again at the Harvard Square Theatre tomorrow night, almost manages to convince us otherwise: Ming Cho Lee's set is delicately authentic in shades of grey; the second-act Flower Duet culminates in an inspired bit of flower-arranging rather than in the usual mess of pink petals strewn about the stage; best of all, the cast is almost entirely Japanese. We are, as I said, almost convinced that Madama Butterfly is really about Japan-but Puccini's music spoils the illusion. Strip away the evocations of the inscrutable Orient-pentatonic scales, xylophones and chimes-and you discover the same handful of juicy, sentimental arias and duets that constitute the enduring appeal of all of Puccini's operas. It's Le Boheme again, and only a little bit tainted by that turn-of-the-century enthusiasm for "all one sees that's Japanese."

That brings me, unfortunately, to the great problem of Sunday night's performance. Tacko Tsukamoto is the prettiest Butterfly I have ever seen: she is slim, graceful, and really looks "just fifteen." All this is infinitely preferable to Renata Tebaldi lumbering about the stage in yards of flowered silk, but vocally, Miss Tsukamoto provided only the barest outlines of any kind of Butterfly at all. Her pleasant voice was often completely inaudible in low-lying or pianissimo passages, and only occasionally did she summon anything like the power necessary for Butterfly's big moments. A soprano who can sing the second act of Butterfly should also be able to sing Tosca: they are both "Italian operas," and the first rule for singing in an Italian opera is to make sure everyone can hear you. Refinements come later on-if, of course, they come at all.

A Butterfly without a Butterfly is hopelessly disabled: matters were not helped any by Thomas Hayward's inelegant Pinkerton and Umeko Shindo's wobbly Suzuki. Only John Reardon, the Sharpless, did full justice to his music: he sang with richness and strength, and his diction was a lesson to the rest of the cast, though it occasionally uncovered in the English translation such painful bits as: "Oh joyous, happy days of carefree youth!"

Sarah Caldwell's direction of the excellent orchestra seemed a bit lethargic, and on the whole, this Butterfly offered for Puccini's heady brew a rather weak cup of tea.