Teatro La Fenice in Beijing: "Madama Butterfly"

"Madama Butterfly" (program). Teatro La Fenice's production. NCPA, Beijing. June, 2009.

"Madama Butterfly" (ticket) Teatro La Fenice's production. NCPA, Beijing. June, 2009.

When it was announced that Teatro La Fenice was going to perform "Madama Butterfly" in Beijing, I did not hesitate for a moment to go and watch it. The National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) was a beautiful framework for this new operatic production, a big theatre with a very good acoustic designed precisely for operatic performances .

I am just an Opera fan, I would say quite a rudimentary one, and this piece by Puccini is a "not to be missed" for any fan. Being a theater person as I am, a lover of the avant-garde and exploration, I have always been opposed to the limited “Theatrical” progress or evolution in this Performing Art, and many times I have been uncomfortable with some of the ways Opera creators use to modernize the genre. I admire those moments in the history of the Opera when novelty and change arrived: Haendel, Wagner “La Opera Realista”, the postmodernist, Stanislavski’s search for a real Opera actor, but I also love to keep many Operas as they were created and for what they were created. In the end, Opera is like Ballet, a codified genre that served the needs of one determined artistic time in history; opera allows us to see with its own codification an Ariosto represented almost as it was in past centuries, or repeating a Verdi Opera in a Venice premiere.

I was telling a friend, who likes to listen to Opera but not going to see it performed, that in fact my only love for Opera was listening to it "live" as a spectator, that is, listening to it live and not being afraid to bear loads of absurd situations and actions, terrible drama-scripts and interminable tedium only for the fact that music is there and I can listen to those voices in front of me. But deep in me I always keep the hope of seeing a show that makes me feel like I am really in front of a high quality stage event and makes me keep it forever in my memory. Hope is hope. Well, it was not the case with this production of La Fenice.

Video: "Un bel di vedremo", "Madama Butterfly". Teatro La Fenice, 2009.

Putting aside the always high-quality voice and music in a company like this (1), which I enjoyed immensely, the production in general had, from my point of view, many problems: I felt that a too modern minimalist Scandinavian-Japanese style scenography (with use of perspective) just helped to throw away the "realistic" game one of the most classic operas by Puccini has (no bridge, no hill, no sun, no vegetation, but a very modern Japanese style room...); it helped also to miss a large part of the “melodrama” that gives to the history its grandeur, an absurd history itself, with an orgy of misconnected bizarre names and many very ignorant concepts about Oriental culture, but within a melodramatic codification that wakes the spectator’s passions up and makes him love and suffer with the main characters.

I have myself already adapted to the excesses of the costumes and makeup of Japanese male characters that appear in this Opera, it seems a non written rule in all productions. The current version was no exception, with ridiculous costumes with fantastic motifs taken from Kabuki or even Chinese Opera’s fantastic characters. I can’t imagine how Chinese spectators felt when they saw this kind of costumes, maybe they simply did not notice, maybe it was just another crazy-Western-thing.

This time, Butterfly, her body, was suffering from weakness, with what seemed Japanese coldness, her movements were kind of robotic (some of my old acting teachers would say “cutting off air”), and with only one scene, in my point of view, to remember: Butterfly decides to wait with her child for the arrival of Pinkerton, who was known to have returned to Japan: beautiful and soft music played, filled with a sense of loneliness and powerlessness, and the director made us feel an Oriental style suffering, with the characters seated on their knees behind a translucent blue screen, without any action, just waiting.

The end of the Opera had a curious change, which is important to mention: Who does not remember that Butterfly dies because she commits "harakiri" in an act of desperation, totally lost without a husband and giving her child over to him? Well, this time, the director Daniele Abbado, in an apparent breakdown of genius (or mulishness?) makes Butterfly die in what would be a heart attack... Yes. Come on! she dies because of the impression: The woman was going to stab herself with the knife when suddenly her child comes, she forgets the knife, sings her last aria, the child leaves the room, and she dies of despair in the middle of the scene of some sort of attack, then her body lies on the floor in a simile of a butterfly that has been nailed by a pin.

Why not let her die as she "should die"? Everyone loves the harakiri, who will remember an ending like this?... I mean, who will remember it well?

Anyway ... Here are two videos showing those two endings: the first one is the death of Butterfly by heart attack in the performance I saw but recorded in Italy a month ago; and the second one is a filmed version of the classic Opera with the usual death by harakiri.

Video: Butterfly dies of a heart attack. Teatro La Fenice (2009)


Video: Butterfly dies by "harakiri". Old filmed version.

I was lucky and found someone on Youtube who uploaded an almost complete performance, shown on a television broadcast, the same performance I had seen, but in Italy (the only changes are the singers). This is called a playlist, so we have here something like 13 videos that can be seen in the same window, one after another.

Playlist of videos of "Madama Butterfly" performance at Teatro La Fenice (2009)

(1) It was announced a Chinese great singer in one of the three performances, but in that I went to see played a singer from La Fenice's Company.

"El Gran Teatro del Mundo" in Beijing (Second Part). Those marvelous buildings as a stage design.

It is said that Romans built large avenues and triumph arcs for welcome their victorious armies; it is said that Renaissance and Baroque European kings adorned their cities and built marvelous monuments only for 5 or 10 day-festivity; it is also said that a Chinese Emperor liked to travel through Yangtse river accompanied by 2000 members of his court and transformed the landscape of every part the procession passed by.

Now we can say... It is said that at the beginning of the 21st Century Beijing astonished the World , the city was transformed for a two-week sport party and many marvelous buildings were built for the occasion.

This is an only visual post, showing those buildings created as stage design for two weeks of a glorious theatrical production.

(Every one of these videos were recorded by the author's Blog)

National Centre for The Performing Arts ( The Egg). Day view.



National Centre for The Performing Arts (The Egg). Night View.



CCTV Tower and the CBD

National Stadium (The Bird's Nest)

Nada from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Swimming National Stadium (The Water Cube)

Kiri Te Kanawa in Beijing. A sea of serenity.

Kiri Te Kanawa's Concert Program. At "The Egg", Beijing 2008.

When I bought the tickets for this performance on January the 2nd 2008, at the Music Hall of the National Centre for Performing Arts, I never thought that the stage would be situated so close to me, and so would be, of course, the star of the night, Kiri Te Kanawa. She was there, no more that 10 meters away from my seat, singing, for 1000 or 2000 spectators, but for a moment I felt she was only singing for me.

I've always had the aim of perceiving and studying the work of the best artists as close as possible, and when this is really possible a sensation of triumph comes to my heart and my soul simply goes and enjoys. Some hours ago, during her performance, I stayed looking at her with all my attention, enjoying and analyzing her voice, her eyes, her hands, her gestures; I was learning and I was enjoying one of the highest levels of artistic technique and talent a human being can reach.

Listening to her made me recall many moments of my life. Without exaggerating, one falls in love with one or another great artist, we’ve all been teenagers, it is inevitable! Many special moments were filled by them, by their art. Those tones, that special rhythm did it.

I clapped and shouted "bravo" many times, I lived some kind of ecstasy; we all have some kind of spectator career, this could be a definite turning point in mine.

Most of the recital consisted of one series of songs accompanied by pianist Julian Reynolds,songs not as famous as many others we would have wanted to listen to by composers like Strauss, Mozart and Puccini. But that first impression disappeared after listening to the always special way she usually charms her public: ambience. I called it a big sea of serenity; she manages her volume with mastery. There is no projection, there is magnetism. Even Mozart and his Die Zauberflöte never jumped into the usually energetic interpretation, everything stayed equal, a sea of serenity. Those pieces by the biggest composers became simple motifs of beauty, contemplation, fluidity and, one more time, serenity.

In the end, to close the concert, came "O mio Babbino caro".

Since my teens I have identified this aria by Puccini with Kiri Te Kanawa's voice; I have dreamed and been inspired by her interpretation; some hours ago, she sung for me and I felt again as a youngster, a dreamer. In this extraordinary and melodramatic explosion of sensations I didn't cry, there were no tears; I was simply very extraordinarily happy.

Kiri Te Kanawa is one of many top stars (1) who are coming to China for the first season of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, the new main national theatre of China, built by the French architect Paul Andreu. "The Egg", as this building is known because of his egg "à la cacerole" shape , has three big theaters: a music hall, an auditorium and the grand theater. This huge and impressive structure of metal and wood is considered one of the architectonic wonders of our time.

The sad point of the night was part of the public. At the beginning of the concert the Music Hall was full to capacity but, after the first intermission (the concert had around 6 intermissions), a part of the public left; that was sad. But with some panic we started to see that more public kept leaving taking advantage of the next intermissions. Of course that didn’t change Kiri Te Kanawa’s attitude, who at her every entry to the stage saw how some parts of the theater had been left empty.

I'll try to explain this situation: in general, in China, important spectacles are subsidized by the government or, because of the interminable bureaucratic permits, theater impresarios have so many "favors to repay" that they give big quantities of free tickets to bureaucrats; many people sell their free tickets, but many go to the performances without even knowing what they are going to see, leaving the shows within the first 10 or 15 minutes, specially in Western style events.

I said it before, Kiri Te Kanawa saw this, but nothing changed, and most of the public stayed there, seated, waiting for the next song; she always smiled and sung preciously.

After "O mio Babbino caro", in that usual part at the end of every concert, we asked for more and then she sung two more pieces, amongst them one composed in Maori, the language of the natives in her New Zealand.

Of course it was impossible to take a video of the concert, but I found in Youtube a video recorded in the 90's in Italy with Kiri Te Kanawa singing "O mio Babbino caro":