• Madame Butterfly (Tokyo Nikikai)

10/6/19 (Sun), Tokyo

Veteran Japanese director Miyamoto Amon takes on the Puccini opera. In interesting contrast with the unending complaints abroad about Butterfly’s portrayal, Miyamoto’s contention is that it is Pinkerton who has been presented unfairly. In the director’s telling, Pinkerton truly loves Butterfly and marries her despite being engaged to an American woman. He is forced to leave her behind because of military obligations but has never forgotten his feelings for her. Meanwhile, his child with Butterfly has no memory of his time in Japan and has never been told the truth of his background.

As the curtain opens, that child, now a young man in his early thirties (his name is never given), receives a letter from his dying father in a mimed sequence before the opera proper that relates the story, which is shown in flashback. The young man is visible throughout the show silently watching the proceedings from the side, even rushing into the scene at one point to rescue himself as a blindfolded child teetering on the edge of the stage. Pinkerton reveals his love for Butterfly and his bitter regret at his inability to save her. He is shown on his deathbed on various occasions throughout the opera, until the innovative ending in which, recalling Butterfly’s suicide (which is taking place before us on the other side of the stage), he calls out longingly for her in his final breath.

This is a stark change from the traditional approach in which Pinkerton is portrayed as the bad guy who callously planned to dump his three-month lover from the start and returns only to retrieve his son. The story in this version thus becomes Pinkerton’s tragedy as well.

That is an interesting concept,  but it brings problems. While it’s never good to over-think these things (it’s opera, after all), Pinkerton does imply strongly in the script that he’ll break the wedding pact before he even signs it, laughing at the fragility of Japanese contracts (“I’m marrying in Japanese fashion for 999 years with the right to be freed every month”), and on his own wedding day toasts the point in the future when he will take “a real American bride”. That does not suggest that he is particularly serious about the affair. Butterfly’s status in his mind, in most readings, is what would be expected of a short-term geisha companion purchased from a broker for 100 yen.

The question in Miyamoto’s interpretation is why Pinkerton didn’t take Butterfly with him back to America in the first place and why, if he took the marriage in earnest, he would marry again. (Miss Saigon, the modern musical adaptation of Butterfly, uses a much defter approach as the American’s departure is not voluntary but a sudden evacuation under military siege, giving him good reason to believe he’ll never see his Butterfly again.) It’s nice of Miyamoto to make Pinkerton a sympathetic character, and the guilty cry at the end is a terrific addition, though I wonder how Kate felt when her husband’s final words were his lover’s name. Unfortunately the libretto works against Miyamoto’s best efforts.

The show uses melodramatic lighting effects to punctuate big moments, along with overdone movements like people tumbling to the ground at the least provocation (on at least three occasions) – the director is not much for subtlety. Among other oddities, Butterfly climbs a ladder to the roof of her house to sing “Un Bel Di”, as one does; let’s see if overseas divas can or will follow that. Maybe the intent was to highlight the artificiality of the drama since it represents the young man’s visualization of the letter. Also, I wasn’t sure about the Japanese bowing by Kate, who has just arrived in the country for the first time – was she coached beforehand by Sharpless?

The set was simple, with a room wheeled in on occasions and projections otherwise filling in the blanks. The “Flower Duet”, for instance, didn’t involve any actual flowers; the images popped up instead on screens hanging in back. I was surprised that the director didn’t opt for a more realistic Nagasaki setting, especially in a show designed for Japan, but he evidently sought a cinematic flow over a glamorous production. While some of the images were stunning, the overall color scheme seemed muted other than the fantastic parade of geisha early on, maybe trying to suppress the exotic nature of the show for something darker. There was a lovely if not entirely legible projection of Pinkerton’s letter onto the stage, with the words then dissolving in a nice image borrowed from Miyamoto’s other shows.

The cast from the venerable Nikikai Opera, starting with Omura Hiromi in the title role and Ohara Keiroh as Pinkerton, was superb from top to bottom, and the music, conducted by Andrea Battistoni, sounded great. This is not the ideal production from a visual standpoint (Nikikai’s prior version just two years earlier was better in that respect), but it’s a fresh interpretation of the material that, especially coming from a Japanese director, should help deflect accusations of Western insensitivity. The opera moves on next year to Dresden, Copenhagen and San Francisco.

UPDATE: Here’s another article on this production.