As pop-star Basia (what’s she up to these days?) once sang, “Hello again, it’s me!” (the actual song title is A New Day for You from her Time and Tide album.)
The new production of Madama Butterfly from the Teatro Real in
Madrid is wonderfully sung and played. (Some sing better than others, of
course.) It happens to be Independence Day here in the U.S.; so, it seems oddly
appropriate to watch this “ugly American” tale. In reality, this is the first absolutely free day I’ve had in a while.
And it was just broadcast (streamed) live on the Opera Platform (OP) on 30 June.
Sadly, when you click to watch it
on demand, you get the following message: “Sorry, this video is no longer
available.” However, if you scroll down further, you’ll learn that there were “complications
during the live streaming.” So instead of “no longer available,” it’s really only
“not available yet.”
Anyway,
Teatro Real also live-streamed it on their Facebook page and you can find that on YouTube (with Spanish subtitles.) It’s
a beautiful production, and it's the description on the OP site that tempted
me to watch an opera that is low on my “Operas I Love” list:
Director Mario Gas sets his new interpretation of the opera on the stage of Madrid’s Teatro Real in a 1930’s film studio where they are working on a film adaptation of Puccini’s opera. Gas opens the opera’s plot up by adding a film crew, offering two interpretations simultaneously: the acting in front of the camera and the actual film.
What the director actually does is merely
capitalize on the current trope of live streaming the opera on screens above
the stage (see La Clemenza di Tito from
La Monnaie, where it’s a news camera crew doing the filming; and several Don Giovannis in which one or more of
the singers use their iPhones to live stream their antics.) In Clemenza and Giovanni the cameras/projections added another dimension to the
story.
In this Butterfly, I kept waiting for the “film” layer to add new ideas;
maybe showing us the relationship of the singers to one another off camera.
However, all the cameras and crew do is get in the way, distancing us from the
drama. Maybe that’s what the director intended. I guess I’ve been spoiled by
Stefan Herheim. I’ve read about his Butterfly
(I wonder if a video exists) in which Puccini has an active role; he had a
subplot involving the Statue of Liberty (no, that was his Manon Lescaut); guest appearances by Manon, Mimi, and Tosca; and the
concept that neither Puccini or the soprano want her to die; but she does anyway.
That’s opera.
