Madama Butterfly

Andrea Breth’s gorgeous production of Madama Butterfly, following its runs in Aix-en-Provence and Lyon, now comes to the Komische Oper Berlin – and is sure to move audiences to tears. There’s good reason why Puccini described his masterpiece as ‘the most heartfelt opera I have ever written’.

The young geisha Cio-Cio-San, or ‘Butterfly’, marries the American naval officer Pinkerton: for him it’s just an ‘exotic’ fling, but for her the marriage means everything – an escape from poverty, a bright future, and a new life as a mother. The heartless Pinkerton soon leaves Japan to find a ‘real’ wife back home, while Butterfly – oblivious to his betrayal – waits with their child for his return. Three years later, Pinkerton finally reappears, but with his new wife – and after all this, he now wants to take away Butterfly’s child too. When she finally realizes the truth, she sees only one way out: death.

Puccini’s renowned opera telling the tragic tale of a hopeful Japanese woman and her decadent American husband has lost none of its power, even today. He confronted the colonial arrogance of the West with a forthrightness that was quite unusual for the early twentieth century. While Pinkerton embodies what may be Puccini’s least sympathetic tenor role, his titular heroine undergoes perhaps the greatest transformation of all his operatic characters: from geisha to virtuous wife, to single mother, and finally to one who chooses suicide.

Surprisingly for such a master of psychological realism, Andrea Breth brings a more painterly aesthetic to this production. With the atmospheric use of kimonos, cherry blossoms, and cranes, as well as Breth’s restrained direction, the focus remains squarely on what matters most: the characters.