Madame Butterfly
Giacomo Puccini (Music)
Eiki Isomura. & Josh Shaw (Japanese/English Libretto, Courtesy of Pacific Opera Project)
Pocket Opera
Poorly received upon its 1904, La Scala premiere in Milan, Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly went on to become one of the globe’s most popular and beloved operas, often cited to this day as the sixth most produced opera. Yet Madame Butterfly also has a much-troubled history — especially as the decades progressed to the twenty-first century — due to wide criticism that the opera perpetuates racist, sexist stereotypes of Asian women and portrays the Japanese culture as weak and inferior to the West’s (especially American) culture and norms.
In light of the inherent issues imbedded in Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s original Italian libretto, Pocket Opera opens a new version of Puccini’s classic, retaining his celebrated music and the basic story, but utilizing via courtesy of the Pacific Opera Project a Japanese/English libretto created by Eiki Isomura and Josh Shaw. Along with other culturally and time-period sensitive touches by Director Melody Tachibana King and a cast of twenty where all Japanese characters are played by exceptionally talented and experienced Asian singers/actors, Pocket Opera’s Madame Butterfly sheds new, much-needed re-interpretation that vividly allows this story of love, misunderstanding, loss, and tragedy to be told in a manner more authentic and truthful of both cultures.
Chester Pidduck is the U.S. Navy officer, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, who has rented a 999-year-old house high above Nagasaki where he plans to receive his bride-to-be, a fifteen-year-old geisha named Cio-Cio San, or “Butterfly” in English. His ego-inflated, air-piercing tenor displays his proud, chin-cocked-upward attitude, with his singing to his friend, the America Consul, Sharpless, “I have to have her [i.e., Butterfly].”
That Japanese law permits abandonment to be the same as divorce is of course well-known to Pinkerton, who on his wedding night describes Butterfly as “my little toy [that] belongs to me.” Stroking her at times almost as if she were his pet before forcefully kissing a still shy and reserved, new bride, the production’s director ensures we see Pinkerton for what he really is: A girl-in-every-port cad who cares little for the long-term effect that this so-called marriage will have on this young, trusting girl whom he means to leave behind. Chester Pidduck skillfully with cocky vocals and demeanor creates a persona we cannot help but soon find deplorable.
In great contrast in every respect is the bride we meet. She enters her to-be-home accompanied by ten female relatives, including her mother (Akane Ota), Aunt (Josephine Lee), and Cousin (Niko Murakami). The collected ensemble sings in sparkling, melodiously blended harmonies of Japanese their wishes for her happiness. Above them and even before we see Butterfly, we hear Hannah Cho’s incredibly lyrical soprano sing also in Japanese, “Called here by love, I have come to the house of love.”
As Consul Sharpless translates into the ear of Pinkerton, Butterfly sings to her groom of her once-wealthy family’s troubled history, of her necessity to become a geisha to survive, and how now, “I have nothing to fear as long as I have you.” With an expressive voice and a face that both radiate, her Butterfly continues to sing of feeling like ” a goddess of the moon” as she glows in her good fortune. Even after she is denounced by her religiously ordained Uncle, The Bonze (a powerfully voiced bass-baritone, Chung-Wai Soong) and by all her female relatives for her rejecting her native religion to become Christian like her now-husband, Butterfly is soon undeterred and once again visibly/vocally at peace with her choice.
Our first glimpses of Hannah Cho as Butterfly are only a hint of the breathtakingly beautiful, in-depth displays of her stunning talents that we are soon to experience. Three years after Pinkerton’s quick departure (promising to return “when the robins make their first nest”), Butterfly does not lose hope that his word is true. With eyes that search longingly to a vast ocean below, she magnificently sings with a voice that climbs ever higher to easily attained peaks, “One fine day, we’ll begin to see from across the sea a thread of smoke” — her face suddenly brightening as she imagines seeing the Connecticutt, her husband’s ship. When shown by Sharpless a letter that says Pinkerton will never return, her Butterfly’s sings in an anguished voice that strikes as a knife to our hearts that she “would rather die” than return to her former life as a geisha.
However, a surprise sighting of the Connecticutt on the horizon leads to a heart-touching duet or renewed joy that she sings with her loyal maid, Suzuki, played by HaYoung Jung with arresting poise and in emotionally moving mezzo-soprano. Suzuki’s love and devotion to Butterfly is particularly evident as later her compelling voice shakes us to the core as she sings her grief over Butterfly’s soon-to-come, final demise.
Anders Fröhlich is yet another wonderfully cast principal who brings as the Consult Sharpless a cross-cultural understanding and empathy so absent in Pinkerton, warning a number of times to the lust-driven American that “she believes you” and “this vow will cost her and her family.” With consistently distinct and demonstrative vocals, his Sharpless intones repeatedly ignored warnings and later, heartfelt regrets.
Joachim Luis plays with assured tenor vocals the diabolical matchmaker, Goro, who arranges the quick marriage and also serves as the initial translator in Butterfly’s ear of what the English speakers are saying. With rolling, richly embodied tenor notes, Kevin Gino as Yamadori pushes sincerely his own solicitation of love for the jilted Butterfly, who has no time or desire for his persistent pleas of marriage. And in many ways the star of the night — at least in terms of the number of sighs generated by the sold-out audience — is young Donzheh Pidduck who plays with looks to melt one’s heart the three-year-old son of Butterfly and Pinkerton’s brief union.
Melody Tachibana King and Akane Ota are major contributors to the authentic, culturally accurate feel of the production through the vibrant array of costumes designed that include colorfully designed kimonos worn with obi (sash) and geta (wooden sandals). Western wear of the period dons the Americans as well as Butterfly who relishes dressing in the current style of “my country … my America.”
In the intimate, small space of Mountain View Performing Arts Center’s Second Stage, Daniel Yelen still is able to create a Japanese home setting of the time, adding Americanized elements as Butterfly seeks to live in the kind of home she believes will her husband will want when he returns. It did seem that the graceful, Japanese screen wall with sliding panels did define a space such that the performers mostly played to the middle of the three-sided, near-by audience — much different than other Pocket productions I have seen in this same space where blocking was very much shared toward all three directions.
Temirzhan Yerzhanov both plays the piano and directs the eleven other members of the Pocket Philharmonic that overall does full justice and more to Puccini’s oft-familiar and much-beloved score. However, a key issue on opening night — especially in the first act — was that the orchestra too often over-powered the singers to the point it was difficult to hear all their notes and/or lyrics. That was particularly true time and again for Chester Pidduck’s Pinkerton.
For nearly fifty years, Pocket Opera has provided Bay Area audiences the unique opportunity to experience grand opera in a chamber-like setting, making the classics so much more accessible both physically and through founder Donald Pippin’s extensive library of English-translated librettos. The decision to stage Madame Butterfly not just in English but also in Japanese was a brilliant move by General Director Nicolas A. Garcia — one that ensured this musically thrilling and emotionally moving production is also a Madame Butterfly culturally more accurate and sensitive.
Rating: 4.5 E
Madame Butterfly continues February 22, 2026, at Legion of Honor in San Francisco and March 1, 2025, in a two-hour, thirty-minute (plus intermission) production by Pocket Opera. Tickets are available at http://pocketopera.org.
Photo Credits: Paul Yao
