One of opera’s most timeless productions comes to Williamsburg’s Kimball Theatre Memorial Day weekend.
“Madama Butterfly,” performed in the original Italian with English subtitles, opens Friday with performances on Sunday and Tuesday.
Since premiering in Milan in 1904, “Madama Butterfly” has morphed into a phenomenon. According to Operabase, a global database for the performing arts, it is the sixth most performed opera of all time. The Royal Opera House in London has featured it more than 400 times.
This is the first time the Kimball Theatre, with a capacity of 410, has staged Giacomo Puccini’s piece. The intimate setting allows for an orchestra of only 20 instruments.
“We can do some Puccini like ‘Butterfly’ with a smaller orchestra without losing quality,” said Naama Zahavi-Ely, founder and artistic director of Opera in Williamsburg, the company behind the production.
Zahavi-Ely has seen the opera multiple times, including at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
“Each production is different,” she said. “Even if you have seen it many times, you’re likely to cry, to feel tears coming up in your eyes. When opera is good, it works on your emotions.”
The story centers on teenager Cio-Cio San or Butterfly, marrying an American navy lieutenant in Nagasaki. He abandons her to return to America and marries again, returning to Japan with his new wife. A heartbroken Butterfly has since given birth to a son, whom she gives up by taking her life.
While this is her first time performing in Williamsburg, Japanese soprano Miho Sakoda debuted as Butterfly in Tokyo in 2019 – “a big challenge for me since I hadn’t sung a major operatic role before,” she said.
That production told the story in a traditional Japanese way with authentic costumes, set design and movements. Sakoda worked intensely with an Italian voice teacher who taught her to phrase each word authentically.
“In Japan, opera performances usually only have a few performances,” she said. “This was just a single show.”
She had her American debut in the role four years later at the Savannah Voice Festival and Sakoda focused on expressing Butterfly’s delicate emotions with greater precision.
“I remember the audience reaction strongly – laughing at the funny moments and crying at the tragic scene,” she said.
She played Butterfly again in Hyogo, Japan.
The Williamsburg show is a modern version by director Isabel Milenski, founder of Floating Opera New York, and the internationally acclaimed conductor Jorge Parodi. The performers most often wear Western attire, though some scenes include silk kimonos.
Sakoda was the only performer who knew the proper way to tie a kimono, worn with a sash or obi. The loosely fitted garment is a symbol of longevity and good fortune in Japan and is worn left side wrapped over the right.
“She taught all of us how to tie it,” said Mary Jo O’Shaughnessey, costume manager for the Kimball Theatre. “It’s really complicated. There’s ritual to it.”
Another nuance: The Williamsburg show will not feature a real child but a lifelike prop made for the production.
“That’s a very bold artistic choice,” Sakoda said. “Since the child is such an emotional center of the story, I’ve been thinking hard about how to make that relationship feel real and moving, so the audience can still imagine the child’s presence and connect with that part of the story.”
While critics over the years have panned the Butterfly character as being a stereotype of Japanese women being weak, Sakoda said she does not feel Puccini wrote the opera to belittle anyone.
“To me, this opera is about love,” she said. “Butterfly doesn’t take her own life because of shame and humiliation. She does it out of love for her child.”
At that time in Japan, a mixed-race child would have faced a difficult life, she said.
“Butterfly stands between two worlds — Japan and America,” Sakoda said. “She still has the identity as the daughter of a samurai. That’s why she chooses seppuku, a traditional way to end her life with dignity.
“In Japan, ‘Madama Butterfly’ is often seen as a story about a sincere, deeply devoted woman.”
Visit the Kimball Theatre or operainwilliamsburg.org for more information and tickets.
