The brilliant set of the Opera Hong Kong’s new production of Madama Butterfly, which opened on 6 October, is a panel set a few meters back from the front of the stage that emulates the front of a Japanese house. The room itself is set into this panel almost 2 meters above the stage floor. The ingenuity of the design however is that it also serves as a screen onto which full stage-wide and stage-high projections are cast: designs from Japanese prints, seascapes, crashing waves, gardens, calligraphy. The effects range from artistic to evocative or illusory.
Butterfly is one of those operas that is performed every few years in Hong Kong for reasons that are probably self-evident: far from being remote and exotic as it must have been for the first audiences in Europe and America, and may still be, in East Asia the story hits close to home. Previous productions have tended to make use of more realistic sets: a house and garden, say. The alternating beauty and brutality of this production was refreshing and, when it needed to be, shocking.

Korean soprano Sae-Kyung Rim sang the title role on opening night and, in both voice and bearing, dominated every scene she was in. The two main Japanese characters, the maid Suzuki and marriage broker Goro, were sung by Japanese mezzo Yayoi Toriki and Hong Kong tenor Chen Yong both of whom imbued these supporting roles with distinct and believable personalities. The two Americans, Pinkerton and the Consul Sharpless were sung by tenor Mykhailo Malafii and baritone Marcin Bronikowski. Local bass Apollo Wong was sonorous as the “bonze”—the priest and Butterfly’s uncle—while Hong Kong resident American soprano Michelle Lange took on what must be one of the most unfair roles in opera, that of Pinkerton’s “real American wife” Kate, a role which has only a few, but crucial lines, and which involves a good deal of decorative standing around as a sort of tableau vivant of one, both of which she managed with serenity and aplomb.
The other star of the performance was the orchestra, made up of the Hong Kong Philharmonic under the direction of Yves Abel. It has never seemed to sound better.
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