Richard Bratby

Hits you where it hurts: Welsh National Opera’s Madam Butterfly reviewed

Plus: what a teeming, superabundant piece Tippett's Midsummer Marriage is

Lindy Hume does that opera director thing of teleporting the action into an imaginary world that resembles nothing on Earth: Madam Butterfly at the Welsh National Opera. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

‘It’s generally agreed that in contemporary practice, this opera proposes significant ethical and cultural problems,’ says the director Lindy Hume in the programme book for her new production of Madam Butterfly, and if you’ve just shelled out 75 quid in the expectation of attractive scenery and luscious tunes, that’s you told. In truth, it’s rarely advisable to read what a director thinks about their own work, at least until after the show, when it can serve as a bemusing footnote to the evening’s entertainment. Ah, so that’s why they were wearing pink beehive wigs! If a director is any good at their job, it’ll come across on stage without any need for commentary.

Hume’s production is certainly good; in fact it’s very good, at least after the interval. You might have overheard some of the culture war skirmishes that preceded this determinedly non-oriental staging of Puccini’s tragedia giapponese. A great weariness descends; let’s just say that sooner or later Welsh National Opera would have had to replace its washed-out 1970s Butterfly, which at its last appearance in 2017 was probably the single most beige production on the UK stage. And that its successor was always going to have to address the reality that in 2021, apparently, everyone disapproves of Butterfly except the public.

In 2021, apparently, everyone disapproves of Madam Butterfly except the public

So Hume does that opera director thing of teleporting the action into an imaginary world that resembles nothing on Earth. Pinkerton’s love nest is a hard-edged minimalist living pod straight out of Monocle magazine. Staff in white overalls pad silently about, removing the dirty laundry; the men are totalitarian spa attendants and the women are mini-skirted retro-dollybirds (hence the pink beehives). The coolly choreographed rituals of Act One look as bizarre as you’d expect, though sudden, fantastical video effects (by Ash J.

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