There can be few more beautiful productions of Madama Butterfly than this Ellen Kent revival with Cio-Cio-San’s bamboo home set among ferns, flowers, pagoda lamps and flowing water against a backdrop of Mount Fuji.
The costumes, which include ancient Japanese wedding kimonos, are gorgeous, producing a real ‘wow!’ moment when Viktoria Melnyk’s Cio-Cio-San first enters with her retinue, complemented by two mini attendants.
Yet what transcends this surface prettiness is the even more resplendent Melnyk herself. There is a throaty richness in her voice, a ravishing quality worthy of the great Butterflies and which would not be out of place in any of the great opera houses.
She is a convincing figure, retaining something of Butterfly’s romanticism and expressing emotion with a mastery of the formal gestures that Cio-Cio-San would have learnt as a young geisha.
Almost as good vocally is the lantern-jawed Georgian tenor Davit Sumbadze, a Pinkerton as casual with his money as with his affections. His blazing, muscular sound and Melnyk’s soaring high notes combined wonderfully to make their love duet at the end of act one the highlight of the entire piece. This feast for the ears would have had the ‘bravi’ ringing out if we were in Italy. But this is England, so I had to mouth a few silently to myself.
The main supporting singers were in fine voice, mezzo Yelyzaveta Bielous an excellent, rich-toned and demonstrative Suzuki, Moldovans Vitalie Cebotari a solid but rather passive Sharpless and Ruslan Pacatovici a wily, venal matchmaker Goro, ready it seems to hitch up Sharpless with Cio-Cio-San’s mum.
Conductor Vasyl Vasylenko maintained good balance between the stage and the pit—quite a challenge given the multiplicity of one-night stands that the tour is set to perform, each with its own acoustic challenge.
This may not be the most emotionally or morally penetrating production one will ever see, and it is surely a mistake to preserve exactly the same meticulously beautiful stage properties for the second act, four years on, by which time Butterfly and Suzuki are living in penury. Nor are all the supporting roles as well sung or acted as those of the principals.
Such reservations were far from the audience’s mind at the curtain call, however, when a great number rose to applaud Melnyk’s stunning performance and rose again in solidarity as the Ukrainian stars, holding their flag, proudly sang their national anthem.
The production continues its UK tour to Torquay, Manchester, Kings Lynn, York, Bromley, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Darlington, Sunderland, Brighton, Richmond, Birmingham, Cambridge, Bath, Stoke, Glasgow, Oxford, Woking, Bradford, Leicester, Aylesbury, Croydon, Swansea, Basingstoke, Wolverhampton, Bournemouth, Southend and Cardiff until 13 May 2025. Casts change and performers pictured may not correspond to those who appeared in the performance reviewed here.