Madama Butterfly Takes Wing At The Sydney Opera House

Madama Butterfly returns to Sydney Opera House this June – July, following a two-year hiatus. The Opera Australia production is set to wow crowds once more, with the unique interpretation taking place at the Joan Sutherland Theatre for an eagerly-anticipated run from 29^th June – 30^th July.

Madama Butterfly at Sydney Opera House

After receiving four and a half stars from The Sydney Morning Herald for its premiere season that stunned both critics and audiences in 2019, Graeme Murphy’s innovative Madama Butterfly will return to the Sydney Opera House this June.

Murphy’s vision of Butterfly reimagines Puccini’s classic as a futuristic dystopia. Drawing on his roots in choreography and embracing an ultra-modern aesthetic, Murphy and his team have created a visually stunning Butterfly that awakens the senses and propels the audience into the future.

Surprisingly stark but beautiful, the creative dream team of director/choreographers Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon, designer Michael Scott-Mitchell, costume designer Jennifer Irwin and video designer Sean Nieuwenhuis crafted a Butterfly unlike any other production seen in Australia.

Using Opera Australia’s ground-breaking digital technologies, 10 seven-metre-tall LED screens form a captivating, dynamic, symbolistic backdrop and towering robotic servants with which the singers interact. Striking costume designs draw on a range of eras, from burlesque to cartoons and sci fi.

South Korean dramatic soprano Sae-Kyung Rim will make her Opera Australia debut in her signature role, having sung Cio-Cio-San in more than 100 performances around the world. Sae Kyung Rim’s voice is in demand the world over and her Butterfly is richly nuanced.

Several Opera Australia favourites will reprise their roles, including tenor Diego Torre as the maligned Pinkerton, whilst Michael Honeyman and Luke Gabbedy will share the role of his powerless voice of reason, Sharpless, along with Sian Sharp as Suzuki, Virgilio Marino as Goro, Jane Ede as Kate Pinkerton whilst David Parkin steps into the role of Bonze.

Internationally renowned conductor Italian Carlo Montanaro will lead Opera Australia’s Chorus and Orchestra through Puccini’s sublime score.

The same story as hit musical Miss Saigon which originated from the 1886 French novel Madame Chrysanthème, will cause audiences to weep for Puccini’s alluring heroine as she navigates rapturous love and the cruellest heartbreak.

Fluttering beauty, caught and pinned, yet beautiful still.

Constrained, cocooned, caught in a moment of desire, Butterfly is incandescent. In her embrace, Pinkerton finds paradise, then cruelly condemns his bride to purgatory.

Graeme Murphy’s arresting production of Madama Butterfly takes a contemporary look at Puccini’s alluring heroine using a towering digital set.

Fragments of film flutter across the stage, creating a dynamic backdrop for Murphy’s vision of Butterfly. He draws on his roots in choreography to capture the grace and gravity of a story that begins in rapturous love and ends in the cruellest heartbreak.

Puccini’s sublime music imbues this ageless story with impossible beauty, from the irrepressible famous aria ‘One fine day’ to the intense finale.

The Madama Butterfly Cheat Sheet

Who was the composer?

Giacomo Puccini. Born in Tuscany in 1858, Puccini is an Italian composer who took Verdi’s crown as the most prominent composer of Italian opera in his day.

Renowned for his love affairs, Puccini left a trail of broken hearts across Italy, but also left us music-lovers 10 beautiful operas, three of which are regularly in the top 10 of operas performed around the world.

What makes Puccini, Puccini?

Puccini’s music is sweeping, uplifting, enchanting and always intensely moving. His real genius, however, was to combine that music with stories about ordinary people.

The composer himself once said his success was due to putting “great sorrows in little souls”.

What happens in the story?

The American naval officer, Pinkerton, is exploring the world in the name of war and pleasure. He sets his sights on the best and fairest of the land: the stunning Japanese beauty Cio-Cio-San.

Fascinated by her exotic beauty, Pinkerton marries her on sight, while Cio-Cio-San, enthralled by his American ways and promise of a modern life in America, falls wholeheartedly in love with the stranger. But Pinkerton already has a foot out the door, looking forward to the day he will marry “a real wife, a wife from America.”

Years pass, and Cio-Cio-San waits faithfully for her husband’s return from distant shores. Long abandoned by her family, she is alone with her servant Suzuki and a living memento of her American love. She refuses all offers of marriage, singing of her great hope for the day Pinkerton will return. The faithful Suzuki tries in vain to convince her to abandon hope.

But when his ship comes in, Pinkerton is not alone. As dawn breaks, what will become of Butterfly’s great hope?

Who are the main characters?

Cio-Cio-San — (nickname Butterfly), a former geisha

B.F. Pinkerton — an American naval officer

Suzuki — Butterfly’s devoted maid

What’s the big hit?

The heart-breaking ‘Un bel di vedremo’ (One Beautiful Day) is the aria that every soprano dreams of singing. Butterfly is imagining the day her beloved Pinkerton will return — but even as the music soars with her eternal optimism, there is a suggestion of melancholy in Puccini’s score, foreshadowing the morning.

Where have I heard that?

Butterfly’s music is used to startling effect in the film Fatal Attraction.

Something to listen out for

You can’t miss the famous strains of The Star Spangled Banner, which play as the American Pinkerton waits for his Japanese bride and again as Butterfly dreams of her American life.

There’s plenty of Japanese influence in Puccini’s score too — he includes Japanese bells and tam-tams in the orchestra and uses the pentatonic scale to create an “exotic” sound.

Madama Butterfly runs from 29^th June -30^th July. Find out more and buy tickets.

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