Minghella's Butterfly Difficult to Pin Down

By A.J. Goldmann

Spectator Staff Writer

Ever since Cecil B. DeMille made a silent version of Carmen in 1915, filmmakers have been irresistibly drawn to opera. Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning director of The English Patient, is the latest in this line, with his striking new production of Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Minghella's Butterfly opened the Metropolitan Opera's season back in September and promptly sold out all of its subsequent 12 performances. Minghella worked as a playwright before, so he understands the danger of treating the stage as a screen and proceeds with caution.

Minghella's Butterfly is polished and stylized theater. Perhaps its most realistic ingredient is the period Japanese and American costumes, which were designed by upscale designer Han Feng. Other theatrical flourishes include Bunraku puppets (chillingly lifelike Japanese puppets that are manipulated by onstage puppeteers dressed in black), a flock of origami birds, reams of red silk and bright onstage lights.

Some have voiced disapproval at the heightened theatricality, including the use of a puppet as Cio-Cio-San's child. Far more controversial, however, is the soprano who sings the title role, Cristina Gallardo-Domâs.

Ms. Gallardo-Domâs, a Chilean soprano, is a strange choice for this role in general and this production in particular. The role of Cio-Cio-San, the 15-year-old geisha sold into marriage to a faithless American Naval Lieutenant, is both dramatically and vocally demanding. The lead is often alone onstage. She is also the only character that undergoes any development. The soprano who inhabits Butterfly must have the dramatic finesse to make Butterfly's complex of emotions believable and moving as well as the vocal audacity to carry the whole opera on her shoulders.

Pretty, small-framed and delicate, Gallardo-Domâs began the evening in good form. She made a lovely and ethereal entrance, projecting radiance and shyness throughout the first scene and singing with great range and texture.

However, as the evening progressed, it seemed that she was paying greater attention to acting than to her powerful voice, which warbled uncontrollably at times and needed to be reined in during climactic outbursts. As her character descended into madness, her performance became increasingly unhinged. When Sharpless and Suzuki (the remarkable Maria Zifchak) lamented Butterfly's sorry fate, it seemed that they were actually commenting on their co-star's histrionics. By the time of her inevitable suicide-after so many convulsions and conniptions-it was very hard to take her seriously.

In terms of vocal purity, the strongest elements of this production are its leading men-Marcello Giordani as Pinkerton and Dwayne Croft as Sharpless. Giordani is finding a lot of work at the Met and for good reason. The Italian tenor has the texture, clarion pitch and power of a great Puccini tenor. His searing account of "Addio florito asil" was the evening's emotional apex. There is a lot to look forward to as he takes on the role of Rodolfo in next month's revival of La Boheme. Even though the orchestra drowned him out early on, the indefatigable Dwayne Croft turned out an affecting Sharpless, most notably in later scenes.

The charge that this production is too slick, too elegant and all-around too sumptuous is nonsense. If anything, the exquisite, understated and inventive concept is unobtrusive. Unlike recent eye-candy-like Julie Taymor's ever-popular Zauberflöte-the artfulness of the design does not detract from the singing. If anything, it does the opposite: re-focuses your attention on the singers, who are silhouetted against white sliding panels or reflected in a huge sloping mirror.

Minghella's vision and the combined vocal strength of Croft and Giordani make this a Butterfly well worth catching-even if you can't quite pin it down.