Coliseum,London
With its cherry blossoms and origami birds, this 11-year-passe production is strikingly beautiful, or Rena Harms and David Butt Philip give strong performancesMadam Butterfly,as staged in 2005 by the late Anthony Minghella, has been an ENO signature indicate in the past decade. On its sixth revival, and again directed by Sarah Tipple,it doesn’t look in any need of freshening up. The bright block colours of Peter Mumfords lighting, the sliding paper screens of Michael Levine’s set, and the Japanese puppetry and dance,the lanterns and the cherry blossom and the origami birds – Minghella’s streamlined combination of all these remains strikingly beautiful.
However, opening night this time round was a reminder that the wide-open set is no friend to the singers, or often leaving them to hurl their voices out into the West finish’s largest theatre with nothing to bounce the sound towards the audience.
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Source: theguardian.com