Well, this is the loudest Madama Butterfly I’ve ever experienced.
So I thought during much of the first act of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s semi-staged presentation Friday night, at the Meyerson Symphony Center. Problems started with the Puccini opera’s opening fugato, which wants to be busy, but not as frantic and aggressive as music director Fabio Luisi made it. Repeatedly thereafter, Luisi whipped up orchestral sounds that challenged even big-voiced singers to be heard.
Fortunately, things improved in the second act, the orchestra now setting the scene with genuine delicacies. And increasingly the vivid portrayals of the doomed dramatis personae, coached by veteran stage director Paul Curran, riveted the attention and tugged at heartstrings. Previous DSO semi-stagings have been inscrutable as often as illuminating, but this Butterfly ratcheted up emotions to devastating impact.
With the cast performing on a downstage extension, minimal props included high and low tables, cushions and chairs, with some fuzzily projected stars and moon. Supertitles supplied English translations.
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The men favored black suits, but Cio-Cio-San (aka Butterfly) and Suzuki wore dramatically patterned gowns from the fashion label founded by opera singer-turned-designer Suzanne Vinnik.
Early on, one might have thought Jennifer Rowley overdid the Japanese eponym’s clichéd mincing, curtseys and gesticulations. But until she’s wed by the American Lieutenant Pinkerton, she’s been eking out a living as a singer and dancer who entertains men.
In Act Two she essays what she imagines to be more American manners: “I’m no longer the same girl,” she sings. (She’s initially said to be merely 15.) In Act Three, as Pinkerton’s betrayal sinks in, Rowley’s Cio-Cio-San threw every bit of her generously radiant soprano — and intense physicality — into the terrible epiphany. I’ll not spoil the surprising realization of her demise.
As Pinkerton, Evan LeRoy Johnson seemed to drift in and out of dramatic commitment, but, well, he’s a superficial opportunist. In a role that often gets edgy yelling, he supplied a potent but well-controlled Italianate tenor — although some over-loud orchestral assaults required more vocal decibels than necessary.
The opera’s moral centers are Cio-Cio-San’s maid Suzuki and the American consul Sharpless. They’ve seen it all, and, scandalized by Pinkerton’s betrayal, each does what’s possible to soften the blow.
Manuela Custer was made up to look older than the usual Suzuki, and she didn’t prettify her firm mezzo’s breaks into chest voice. But she exuded decency and concern — and physical fury at the slimy marriage broker Goro. Alessandro Luongo gave Sharpless a richly textured baritone and visible horror at the impact of news he’s delivering to Cio-Cio-San.
Keith Jameson portrayed Goro with an aptly acidic character tenor. Singing from the choral terrace, Kidon Choi lacked ideal menace and vocal weight for Cio-Cio-San’s curse-flinging uncle Bonze, and he was oddly inert as her post-Pinkerton suitor Prince Yamadori.
Neither physically nor vocally was Diana Benoit quite persuasive as Pinkerton’s American wife Kate. But Hangyi Lu was irresistible as the ill-starred son of Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San.
Once past the opening scramble, the orchestra played well, if repeatedly too loudly for the singers. Luisi, nothing if not an experienced opera conductor, seemed to be gauging dynamics as if the orchestra were in a pit, not, as here, onstage. The Dallas Symphony Chorus, prepared by Anthony Blake Clark, was also too forceful in the first act.
Details
Repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. $47 to $216. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.
Don Stone, Dallas philanthropist and arts advocate, dies
Stone was a lover of the arts who held leadership positions at organizations such as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Black Dance Theatre and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
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