UK: PREPARATIONS FOR THE RETURN OF OPERA "MADAM BUTTERFLY" TO LONDON'S ROYAL ALBERT HALL

Record ID: 388762

  • Title: UK: PREPARATIONS FOR THE RETURN OF OPERA "MADAM BUTTERFLY" TO LONDON'S ROYAL ALBERT HALL
  • Date: 31st October 1999
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (OCTOBER 22, 1999) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR DAVID FREEMAN "The extraordinary thing about Butterfly, one of the things that makes it such a modern piece is that in the whole history of Orientalism, of Europeans looking at other cultures that are very exotic and more libertine, exciting than ours from Mozart to 1001 nights, al
  • Embargoed: 15th November 1999 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVACYMNLQA4XPRDHH9AEXT8MBAGK
  • Story Text: Preparations for the return of the popular opera "Madam Butterfly" early next year to London's Royal Albert Hall are well under way.The spectacular in-the-round production of Puccini's tragic masterpiece continues to attract large audiences - many of them first-time opera goers - around the world.
    The tragic story of Madam Butterfly's impossible relationship with American sailor Pinkerton can soon be seen again at the Royal Albert Hall.
    Set entirely in the round, the floor of the Albert Hall will once again be filled with 15,000 gallons of water to create a Japanese water garden.
    At the centre of Puccini's operatic triumph are the colliding cultures of East and West personified by Butterfly and her American husband Pinkerton whose tragic relationship leads to Butterfly's suicide in the end.
    In the production of Madam Butterfly, director David Freeman and musical promoter Raymond Gubbay show that the scale of the Albert Hall need not get in the way of dramatic intimacy.Gubbay says "People have the feeling that they're much more involved in the action and of course you can bring the artists down through the audience which is what the director David Freeman has done.He brings the actors and the singers and so on into the play from various parts of the Hall.That in itself creates intimacy because people are sitting in their seats and suddenly Butterfly and her procession of bridesmaids are coming down just by them in their wonderful Kimonos and they see them close-up.It's that kind of thing that achieves intimacy."
    One of the opera's main features is the Japanese water garden.15,000 gallons of water will be pumped into vast tanks in the arena each night to make the garden, replete with floating candles.The water will then be drained during each interval to reflect the draining hopes of the heroine.
    Gubbay says
    "David Freeman's idea as director and David Rogers' as designer was that in the first half the Japanese water garden would be full of water reflecting the power, the life, the vibrancy of what was going on.
    "In the second half with the tragic vents unfolding, the water is drained away and you have a kind of desolate feeling of a rather barren space and that posed problems for us actually the first time round because the amount of water needed was around 50,000 litres had to be drained away each night and the local water authority were not very happy about this going down the drain so we had special tanks installed to filter the water out after each performance and then put back again in time for the next performance so we are very green and very clean in the way that we treat the environment"
    Puccini's attitude to his heroines , his "little women" as he called them, have been described by some as sadistic although he himself would have preferred to regard it as compassionate.Director David Freeman, who held auditions for the role of Butterfly's child in a school in London, says "I actually think it's a very modern piece and although it's somewhat sadistic, you might say it's sadistic in that Butterfly in the end kills herself, all the wrong isn't on Pinkerton's side.Oddly enough, Butterfly has many opportunities to go back into her society she is offered marriage with a Japanese prince.She's a little bit loopy and she slowly goes quite mad I think."
    Nancy Yuen who plays the part of Madam Butterfly made her operatic debut in that role some time ago.She says she plays Butterfly as a strong woman: "I play her as a strong woman.At the beginning of the opera she's only 15 years old as a child bride and by the time she died three years later she was only 18 so I relate very much to the present day's teenagers' problems, the suicidal factors that we've heard so often in the news.She has all these strong elements and she believes in fate.That is something that is very strong in her and she loves this husband of her's, Pinkerton, nobody else in the world.That is why it's such a strong feeling at the end of the opera, that the audience totally completely is thrilled by her strong emotions.So I play her as a very strong woman not just as a little giggly teenager."
    What makes the opera so popular according to Freeman is the fact that Puccini is realistic about life and its darker sides.""Puccini is often accused of being a bit sadistic, well, life is a bit sadistic that's just the truth isn't it.
    There is a lot of cruelty around and what he does is he tries to understand that and I think that is very exciting and that's one of the reasons the piece is very popular still."
    Madam Butterfly will open at the Albert Hall on Thursday, 3rd February 2000 for an initial 12 performances.
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