Past Production Reviews
2The new staging of "Madama Butterfly" offered by Pittsburgh Opera for the first time on Saturday night employs some unusual musical and dramatic turns on the path to the excruciating pathos composer Giacomo Puccini created in this popular opera. The production features an effective cast led by soprano Maria Luigia Borsi, who gave a stunningly dramatic and well sung performance of the title role, Cio-Cio San. While the production originated with Boston Lyric Opera and the costumes were designed for Utah Symphony and Opera, Crystal Manich's new stage direction had great impact and was mostly convincing.Mika Shigematsu was superb as Cio-Cio San's servant Suzuki, a fine singer with personality who showed surprising spunkiness in her first interactions with Pinkerton and Sharpless, the U.S. Consul in Nagasaki, Japan, where the opera takes place in the late 19th century. Tenor Bryan Hymel as Pinkerton showed his vocal strength most impressively at the end of the opera in the brief passage after Cio-Cio San has committed suicide. Secondary roles were generally well handled, including Joseph Gaines' colorful marriage broker Goro and Dwayne Croft's agonized Sharpless. Manich was masterly in presenting the dramatic confrontation between Cio-Cio San and her community after she renounces Japanese culture to become an American wife. She was imaginative in using the minimalist set and achieved strong character definition and interactions throughout. Cindy Limauro's lighting design was exceptionally creative, adding many looks through geometrically highlighted areas of the stage and changes of lighting angle and tint.
Ana María Martínez artful restraint was matched by those around her, including the conductor Karel Mark Chichon, who made his company debut with a performance that kept the drama flowing inexorably forward.
