In 1904, when Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in Milan, the story it tells, of an unscrupulous American naval lieutenant who marries and then abandons a young Japanese woman, Cio-Cio-san, could have come from the day’s news. More than 100 years later, Madama Butterfly is still going strong as one of the most frequently produced operas of all time.
While the exploitation of foreign women by sexist American military officers may be less common today than it was at the turn of the 20th century, the feelings that give life to the music of Madama Butterfly — excitement, confusion, longing, and despair — endure, as do the dilemmas faced by couples whose religious backgrounds force them to make difficult choices. Despite a conspicuous paucity of experience with the actual place, Puccini nevertheless conjured a Nagasaki of the mind in Madama Butterfly that still stands as an emblem of unrequited cross-cultural love. Among the many operas that mourn the tragedy of the sexual double standard, Madama Butterfly takes pride of place. Its bewitching mixture of naïve orientalism and mature Italian passion never grows old.
For this production, Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) has assembled an extraordinary team. OSB General and Artistic Director Kostis Protopapas knows this material in his bones, and with soprano Eleni Calenos, he has a Cio-Cio-san that he can stack up against any singer in the world. She wowed us in 2018 as Mimi in OSB’s production of La bohème, and she has had two recent opportunities to deepen her knowledge of Cio-Cio-san, one in this country, and the other at England’s prestigious Glyndebourne Opera Festival.
