Madama Butterfly: What's not to love

Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera (Review)

How can you not love Madama Butterfly. The story a US navy officer goes to Nagasaki Japan and brokers a marriage with a 15 year old girl, then goes to the next port, leaving her with a baby. She, just a baby herself, thinks that he will return and waits for 3 years looking out to sea every day waiting for his ship to return. Everyone is telling her that he won't return and when he finally does return with his American wife...she self destructs. Who can Not love this story, this music. Finally, after waiting 11 months, I got to hear Patricia Racette perform her Madama Butterfly, that she performed at San Francisco Opera last year to great acclaim.

Patricia was a great study character and I would recommend all sopranos who sing this role go check her out. She has put much time into the study of a Geishia and has the mannerisms down pat. She has the tiny steps down, the demure bending of the body, the shyness and the bashfulness all implemented in her character and she never lets up. Even during the must emotionally rent moments she stays in character. I loved that, but sometimes I wished that she would come out of character, if just to soar with the music.
The music was beautifully delivered by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra...whats not to love. Dwayne Croft sang a matchless Pinkerton delivering plumb bass baritone lines in a lovely legato. Marchello Giordano replaced an ailing Roberto Aronica as B.F. Pinkerton, and delivered a squally tenor hacking out notes from his core. Maria Zifchak sang a scratchy Suzuki which leaves me to think her days at the Met may be numbered. But the talk of the town was Patricia Racette's Butterfly.

I wondered how she had received great acclaim for singing this role at SFO, but I quickly realized that her support from the gay community was probably most responsible for this promotion. Racette's voice is a rather generic lyric soprano voice. She has beautiful focus up and down the scale and her instrument is in line. She tended to sing toward the flat side of her tones, and had a tinny and lightweight timbre. There were one or two moments when she allowed power to take over her voice but you got the feeling that that moment was the absolute top of her game. With the dearth of diva's available to sing this dramatic repertoire, I have to give her kudo's because she did sing it. While her soprano would not be my choice of vehicle for the role, she did not have any problems managing throughout the opera. She sang the role steadily in her own voice and she did not try to push or make her voice bigger than it was and she had no glitches. I must say I admire her for not attempting to sing the role bigger than her instrument allowed or to overdo the singing the way that Christiana Gallardo-Domas did two seasons ago. Racette was very much aware of where the music was going and handled the pacing of the role very well.

That said, I would have prefered a bigger, plummier, heavier sounding Butterfly if only because tradition dictates it that way. In the program notes it states that Butterfly had its Met and US premier in 1907 with Puccini in the audience with Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar in the lead roles. And that Puccini always maintained that 'Farrar's voice was too small for the part.' I think Puccini would say that Racette's voice is too small for this role also. Racette is no Tebaldi, Stratas or Price. However, I think we must also celebrate today's divas, give them a chance, and not always compare them to great soprano's of the past. I waited for 11 months to hear Racette and although I'm not in any way disappointed in her performance, I had expected a Leontyne Price voice which was wrong of me. There will only be one Leontyne, one Tebaldi, one Stratas. I cannot expect to hear that kind of greatness any more. Therefore, I have to give Miss Racette her props for singing the most difficult opera in the repertoire...with no difficulty at all. And I congratulate her on her wonderful accomplishment. Job well done. She will grow into it even more. Whats not to love.