Kang Wang as Pinkerton and Eri Nakamura as Cio-Cio San in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Madama Butterfly, 2025.Michael Cooper/COC
- Title: Madama Butterfly
- Written by: Giacomo Puccini
- Director: Jordan Lee Braun
- Actors: Eri Nakamura, Kang Wang, Hyona Kim, Michael Sumuel
- Company: Canadian Opera Company
- Venue: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
- City: Toronto
- Year: To Feb. 16, 2025
Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly – the sixth-most-performed in the world – is often criticized for its Western stereotypes of Eastern cultures. Even the most sensitive modern productions struggle to wash away the stains of Orientalism; for a production of Butterfly to be interesting, it has to go beyond merely clearing the low bar of cultural appropriation by engaging Japanese culture with enthusiastic curiosity. As such, every new production runs the risk of pushing the show out of cultural relevance.
Luckily, the Canadian Opera Company’s current production has managed to buck the stereotypes and defy expectations, serving culturally appropriate yet imaginative costume and set design and bombastic orchestral delivery to a sold-out audience on opening night.
The plot of Madama Butterfly follows the antics of U.S. Navy Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton after he arrives in Nagasaki, where he quickly arranges an insincere marriage with the earnest and oblivious Cio-Cio San. Shortly thereafter he abandons her and their son to return home and marry a “real American wife.” How do you sell tickets to that in 2025? With a talented and international cast of singers that challenge the historical depictions of these characters.
Butterfly has always been an opera with a global outlook: The opera’s origins are Pierre Loti’s French novel Madame Chrysanthème, released in 1887 and revived in France as an opera of the same name by André Messager in 1893. When the story made it to America in 1898, the chrysanthemum had morphed into a butterfly in a short story by John Luther Long (Madame Butterfly). Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, an 1899 play by American-Italian David Belasco, was the last stop before arriving in Puccini’s hands. When it comes to this sort of artistic transcultural intercourse in opera, you can’t be fragile in your approach to staging it. To quote comedian Kevin Hart: You gotta say it with your chest.
Further evidence of the COC’s enthusiastic exploration of Asiatic cultures can be found beyond this production and through its free concert series in January, which included presentations of Kakyoku: A Journey through Japanese Song and Identität, wherein Samuel Chan (who sings the role of Yamadori in Butterfly) explores the experience of being an Asian artist working in Western opera.
Japanese soprano Eri Nakamura was up against a tough opponent when she took the stage: her own growing reputation as one of the world’s leading interpreters of the Cio-Cio San role.Michael Cooper/COC
The COC’s Butterfly seems to prioritize competence over sensitivity. The aesthetic of this production doesn’t walk on the eggshells of cultural sensitivity, but rather stomps around heartily on the soundstage of cultural competence. This approach is most visible in the casting. For one, choosing Australian-Chinese tenor Kang Wang as Pinkerton is an interrogation of the American identity that this role has historically represented. An ungenerous interpretation of this selection might accuse this production of trying to paper over a difficult libretto with diverse faces. But Wang’s Pinkerton is beyond believable – whether it intends to or not, this portrayal is a subtle reminder that the American identity is a cultural project, not an ethnic one. The best compliment of Wang’s compelling act as a villain came by way of the good-humoured mix of cheers and boos of his character during curtain call to a standing ovation.
Japanese soprano Eri Nakamura was up against a tough opponent when she took the stage: her own growing reputation as one of the world’s leading interpreters of the Cio-Cio San role. It’s an incredibly demanding role, requiring stamina, emotional dexterity and a voice that can rattle the walls of the COC’s cavernous hall – check, check and check. As a talented actor, her comedic timing repeatedly brought moments of levity to this tragedy, and her stage presence fluttered swiftly from innocent butterfly in one moment to goth moth in the next.
Next to Nakamura, South Korean mezzo-soprano Hyona Kim delivered a well-conceived interpretation of Suzuki, Cio-Cio San’s maid. The crackle of her mezzo is as if someone threw a bundle of dynamite on stage, and each one of her lines lit the fuse for small melodic explosions, startling the few snoring husbands in the audience.
As Sharpless, the U.S. consul overlooking the chip on Pinkerton’s shoulder, American bass-baritone Michael Sumuel made the most of this role and brought a fresh dynamic to the old don’t-kill-the-messenger gimmick.
But without a doubt, the best actor on this stage – and it’s not even close – was Naleya Sayavong as Sorrow, Cio-Cio San’s child.
A word of advice: When you see this production, don’t underestimate the set (originally created in 2013 by British director Michael Grandage). So many productions of Butterfly hide behind a generic minimalism when it comes to the set, but here there are brushes of a florid exuberance peeping through the austere design.
South Korean mezzo-soprano Hyona Kim delivered a well-conceived interpretation of Suzuki, Cio-Cio San’s maid.Michael Cooper/COC
As usual, some of the best parts of this opera are happening offstage. Conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson was a joyful surgeon at the podium: a Puccini score is a difficult animal for an orchestra to tame, but setting it free once you do so requires the scrupulous but cheerful attention to detail that Wilson carried for three acts. Perhaps it was the slightly cold opera hall, but the chills that Sandra Horst’s chorus delivered with the “Humming Chorus” that connects the second and third acts will run relays through your body. When all is said and done, it’s the musical material of this opera that has kept its relevance over the past 120 years. But this latest installation of Butterfly meets the moment precisely because it sings with its chest.
