Glyndebourne,Lewes
Annilese Miskimmon’s production for Glyndebourne’s tour presents a tough-edged view of Puccini’s romantic tragedy. Musically, Matteo Lippi’s Pinkerton is marvellous, and while John Wilson excels in the pit Annilese Miskimmon’s production of Madama Butterfly for Glyndebourne’s tour updates Puccini’s tragedy to the 1950s and presents us with a tough-edged view of an opera that some persist in seeing as primarily Romantic. Always one to rethink key works in the repertory,Miskimmon attempts an at times scathing study of exploitation and its consequences, though in so doing she is only partly successful. This is a staging that engages the mind, and sometimes at the price of the work’s emotional impact.
The first act is relocated to Goro’s marriage bureau in a tatty suburb of Nagasaki,where Matteo Lippi’s Pinkerton is but one of many American servicemen keen to acquire advantage of the local custom of a conveniently dissolvable marriage. We’re aware of the ghastly monetary quality of it all as wads of banknotes change hands. Men pick out women from catalogues. A slide show unnervingly reveals Karah Son’s Butterfly as already taken.
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Source: theguardian.com