Madam Butterfly

Published Friday 1 February 2008 at 11:15 by David Gutman

It’s third time around for Anthony Minghella’s visually ravishing, dramatically inert Butterfly. The show makes an intriguing contrast with the unobtrusive production by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier revived last year at Covent Garden.

The ENO team goes for a riot of colour - a set of gorgeously shimmering blocks and screens, a mirrored-effect ceiling to reflect the space and the participation of a band of puppeteers veiled in black. While details of Butterfly’s household, and even her child, are brought to life with technical wizardry, the resort to puppetry can introduce an element of artificiality, just when you need the emotion to feel real. Rather more effective is the stylised curtain call for Butterfly herself, silhouetted against a blood red background.

The key players spend much of the drama occupying their own space. It’s difficult to decide whether this is a conscious attempt at oriental formality or a byproduct of the preoccupation with image, lighting and choreography.

That adaptable soprano Judith Howarth takes a while to find her best form. Ultimately she evokes the vulnerability and sweetness of the character, even when emotional intimacy is undercut by too much stage business. Her supporting team remains wooden, not least Gwyn Hughes Jones’s oft-seen Pinkerton, looking and sounding like a Welsh rugby prop forward.

Neither the sonorously voiced Suzuki of Karen Cargill (her ENO debut), nor the Sharpless of Ashley Holland are encouraged to make much dramatic impact, and Christopher Gillett is physically implausible as Goro. The translation has its dodgy moments and the orchestral playing lacks dynamic range and idiomatic thrust. And yet, whatever the drawbacks, this is a winning spectacle, not the tearjerker it can be, but definitely an event.