Glyndebourne Opera House
Pinkerton – Joshua Guerrero
Goro – Carlo Bosi
Suzuki – Elizabeth DeShong
Sharpless – Michael Sumuel
Cio-Cio-San – Olga Busuioc
Cousin – Jennifer Witton
Cio-Cio-San’s Mother – Eirlys
Myfanwy Davies
Yakuside – Adam Marsden
Aunt – Shuna Scott Sendall
Imperial Commissioner – Michael
Mofidian
Official Registrar – Jake
Muffett
Bonze – Oleg Budurtaskiy
Prince Yamadori – Simon
Mechlinski
Sorrow –Rupert Wade
Kate Pinkerto – Ida Ränzlöv
Annilese Miskimmon (director)
Nicky Shaw (set designs)
Mark Jonathan (lighting)
Kally Lloyd Jones (movement)
Ian William Galloway (video)
Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Nicholas Jenkins)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Omer Weir Wellber (conductor)
‘Picture it,’ as senior Golden
Girl, Sophia Petrillo used to say. ‘England, 19 May 2018…’ An audience found
itself enthralled by the marriage of an impressive woman to a privileged man,
impeccable and dashing in his military uniform, from another nationality and ‘race’.
They wished her well in this fairytale, investing their hopes, personal and
communal, in the success of their union, even as some of their number risked
spoiling the party by exploring a little of the history of this meeting of
cultures. All the while, the mediating moneymakers – well, they made money.
Would it last? Were some of them/us already gearing up to be thrilled by its potential
difficulties, failures, even tragedy? From Windsor Castle, then, to the Sussex
Downs did not seem too lengthy a journey – I saw signs at Clapham Junction for
the latter, as I found my platform for the latter – especially for a festival
opening for which the not-quite-so-great-and-good-as-would-have-resulted-in-an-invitation-to-the-reception
were naturally out in force.
Annilese Miskimmon’s production
of Madama Butterfly, Glyndebourne’s
first, has been seen previously on the 2016 tour, but this was its first
appearance at the Festival proper, and my first encounter with it. It would be
considered reasonably straightforward for most composers, bar the ‘updating’ –
must we continue to use that dated word and idea? – to the 1950s, yet for
Puccini, who perhaps suffers more than any other opera composer from a surfeit
of reactionary stagings, probably marks quite an important step. It is not
Calixto Bieito, nor would one expect it to be. What we see, however, portrays
the drama, both a clash of cultures and expectations on anything but a level
playing-field and a very personal tragedy, with unfailing intelligence and
emotional commitment. I liked it – and the stage performances – very much, and
responded pretty much how I ‘should’, whilst being provoked to think rather
more than I often have been.
What comes across very strongly
from the outset is that, whatever the exalted setting – be it a royal castle or
an opera stage – and the undeniable personhood of the sacrificial victim, there
is something distressingly typical about the story and the social structures
that give rise to it. Cio-Cio-San is placed explicitly in a line of geishas, ‘married’
off to their respective ‘husbands’, educated onsite at the marriage bureau by
the slide show, ‘How to be an American wife’, a ready source of income for the
grubbily venal Goro. (He returns at the close of the first act to count his
money.) A neon-lit HOTEL stands next door, for ease of consummation; or rather,
the bureau stands next door to it, for ease of commerce. The overweening arrogance
of Pinkerton is his personally and culturally: not just the cigarettes he
smokes, but his – in context – shocking act of forcing a horrified Cio-Cio-San
to toss her bouquet behind her. She does not understand, nor do the girls behind
her, who dart away from it. It is cultural misunderstanding, yes, but from a
man and a culture – a gender too – which, holding all the cards, have neither
need nor wish to understand. Perhaps he does, a little; he too, after all, is
ultimately ordinary, nothing special. (Unlike his ‘bride’, he remains that way,
resolutely untransfigured, untransfigurable.) There are a few little signs of
such, and, in the duet with which the first act closes, he shows her a degree
of kindness, or at least of toxic masculine, Yankee concern. He is, however, a
colonial tourist and overlord – and will remain so. So says the score too, of
course, as Puccini subjects the Star-Spangled Banner to further exploration
than one might innocently expect. In Madam
Butterfly, we are all robbed of whatever innocence we may fondly delude
ourselves we possessed in the first place.
The second act, tellingly,
shows us an American house, set in a Japanese – or, rather stylised,
orientalised ‘Japanese’ – landscape. There is no doubting Butterfly’s – sorry,
Mme Pinkerton’s – belief and pride in her new situation, whatever the parlous
financial situation of which Suzuki informs her. She smokes American cigarettes
too now, or claims to; she proudly offers one to Sharpless, and discreetly
chokes on hers. Prince Yamadori was surrounded by Americans as well as ‘natives’,
when he paid her a visit: he is the compromising member of a colonial elite one
would expect. Much is done with light, much is done with designs, costumes
included; she is dressed as an American woman too. Until the end, that is, when
to die in honour, she dresses, tragically and yet not without her hallmark
pride, as the Japanese woman she has, perhaps, always known herself to be. And
her son, little Sorrow, plays with a model of an American gunboat, as he waits
for his father – and as his mother kills herself. Throughout, the tragedy is
intensely personal and intensely imperialist.
In the title role, Olga Busuioc
impressed greatly, especially during the second and third acts, when she seemed
more at ease in the role. (This was, after all, an opening night.) As Alexandra
Wilson writes in her programme note – and this goes for so much Puccini in
general: think what we actually see and hear first-hand in La bohème! – ‘one of the particular strokes of brilliance about the
opera is the way in which Puccini manages to trace the development of … [her]
personality so vividly and perceptively across the span of a comparatively
short opera.’ That needs performative brilliance too, which one certainly
received later on, the dynamic scale of her vocal contribution not the least of
her dramatic tools. Elizabeth DeShong made for a kindly yet – again – proud Suzuki.
If I am rehearsing colonialist stereotypes, what else is one to do in such an
opera? Perhaps the best we can hope for is to do so with a degree of critical
awareness, unless, that is, we are puritanically to consign this and so many
other works to the dustbin of history – and then remain with what?
Joshua Guerrero portrayed
Pinkerton to a tee: his easy, false charm, his arrogance, and yet, a hint of
the ambiguous, albeit quotidian devil to him too. (The pantomime booing he
received was, as ever, deeply regrettable. Can we not put a stop to that, right
now, please?) Carlo Bosi made us loathe the shallow evil of the aforementioned
Foro, whilst Michael Sumuel did an excellent job as the duly compassionate – up
to a point: repeat, up to a point – Sharpless. Indeed, every member of the cast
impressed, and contributed to a greater whole; I noted, especially, Michael
Mofidian’s Imperial Commissioner, Oleg Budartaskiy’s Bonze, and, as much in stage
beaing as in voice – for, as one always rediscovers, she has so little to sing –
Ida Ränzlöv’s Kate Pinkerton.
The London Philharmonic clearly
relished playing Puccini’s score. (Which orchestra would not?) String sheen and
more general tonal allure were not purchased at the expense of incisive drama: quite
the contrary. I could not help but wish that it had been given its head a
little more often by Omer Meir Wellber, but perhaps that was his point. If he did
not always communicate the quasi-symphonic form of the musical work as strongly
as he might have done, with a consequent lack of dramatic impetus at times. For
the most part Wellber showed himself a good accompanist, more often than not
alert to the ebb and flow, often a little reticent and sometimes even sluggish.
In Puccini, just as in Wagner and Strauss, the relationship between orchestra
and singers is not, or should not be, a zero-sum game: attention paid to the
one should heighten our attention to the other. More of that will probably
come, though, as the run progresses. This remained, by any standards, an
impressive opening night for the 2018 Glyndebourne Festival. For those,
moreover, who cared to think, it may have had a good deal still to tell us
about our own hopes and fears, about our own prejudices and our struggles,
however vain, to surmount them. As Carl Dahlhaus once observed, ‘it is
precisely in order to radicalise conflicts — so that “resolutions” are ruled
out — that dramas are written; if not, they would be treatises.’
