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JOHN FLEMINGPuccini's Madama Butterfly gets a staging change in the Opera Tampa production, giving Madama more backbone.
The Puccini heroine is something of a type: fragile, melancholy, victimized by men. Or so it would seem in a simple recital of their tragic endings.
Liu in Turandot commits suicide; so do the title divas of Tosca and Suor Angelica. Mimi in La Boheme dies of consumption, and the heroine of Manon Lescaut brings down the curtain with a similar fate.
Madama Butterfly has another suicide, that of the Japanese teenager who falls in love with the American naval officer, Pinkerton, marries him and has a child, only to be abandoned. But Butterfly's act of self-destruction is not a sign of weakness. Quite the opposite, in fact.
"I think those women - Butterfly, Tosca, Suor Angelica - are knockouts because they had the courage to take their own lives," says Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, author of a 2002 biography of Puccini. "I do not see suicide as a defeat. I think these are very tough ladies."
James Marvel, director of Opera Tampa's production of Madama Butterfly, seeks to reinforce this notion in his staging. "I handle the suicide at the end of the show differently than it's normally done," Marvel says. "I think the way she commits suicide really empowers her over Pinkerton."
The opera concludes with Butterfly stabbing herself just as Pinkerton runs onstage calling her name.
"What I'm doing is basically a shift in timing," says Marvel, staging his fourth production of Butterfly. "There's a big chord right before you hear Pinkerton call out "Butterfly!' and that chord is usually when she stabs herself, so that she's pretty far gone by the time that he enters the room, if not dead already.
"Basically what happens in this production is that she waits patiently, holding the knife, as he calls out, "Butterfly! Butterfly!' Then as he runs onto the stage, calls out "Butterfly!' again and turns the corner, he actually sees her do it.
"In a sense, she waits there very calmly, almost placid and serene but simultaneously intense somehow. The reason it's so important for him to see it is because in that moment he's forced to take responsibility for his action."
Shu-Ying Li, the young Chinese soprano performing Butterfly for her sixth production in the role, likes Marvel's approach. "I think it gives her more strength. When he told me his idea, I felt goose bumps," she says.
Marvel's staging of the scene has also met with the approval of Anton Coppola, the venerable conductor, who has done countless productions of Madama Butterfly and the rest of the Puccini canon. "This girl has a spine," he says. "It takes a lot of courage to stick a knife in your guts. That's the culmination of her heroism."
In Act 1, Butterfly is a 15-year-old bride, braving the rejection of her family and community to marry the American sailor. "There's a contradiction in the role," Coppola says. "Butterfly is supposed to be a girl, a fragile little nothing, but she's required to sing these enormous passages, to be able to soar over the orchestration. The demands are tremendous, vocally, yet she's supposed to be a child."
Act 2 takes place several years later, as Butterfly and her son patiently await the return of Pinkerton, who comes back to Nagasaki with his American wife.
"I think she's very tough to understand," Phillips-Matz says. "I see the opera as a portrayal of growth and understanding. In Butterfly you have the spiritual and psychological growth of a very young girl - think of what teenagers are like - and the opera is fascinating because of that. You see her grow from mere childhood to adulthood in the course of the opera, and that's something I think is very, very, very hard to bring off. I see the whole opera as showing her growth."
Marvel sees Butterfly as coming full circle. "Early in the opera, she abandons the Japanese way of life, turns her back on it," he says. "Then, in the moment of her disillusionment, when she sees things clearly, she returns to the traditions of her home country. In the end she is guided by the Japanese ritual suicide."
Opera Tampa is opening its 10th anniversary season with Madama Butterfly, which was also the company's first production in 1996, with Coppola conducting and Yan Yan Wang in the title role. Art imitates life in the current cast, with B.F. Pinkerton and his American wife, Kate, sung by real-life husband and wife Jeffrey Springer and Dana Peterson.
Coppola thinks Shu-Ying Li, as Butterfly, will make a vivid impression. He first saw her sing the role last April at New York's Dicapo Opera Theatre, as part of an innovative series in which three different versions of Madama Butterfly were performed in one weekend. Puccini revised the work several times after it was a flop in its 1904 premiere.
"Her interpretation is so profound," Coppola says. "She has really probed the depths of the characterization."
Butterfly has four arias. Shu-Ying Li has learned to preserve her vocal resources. "I have to tell myself to be well-organized from the beginning so that I have enough left for the emotion of the last aria," she says.
Marvel recently directed the soprano as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust at Opera Santa Barbara in California. He thinks she is beautifully suited for Butterfly.
"There's this balance as a performer you need to have between the internal aspects of Japanese culture and the overtly passionate aspects of Italian opera," he says.
"You're always balancing what it is at the moment: Are we emphasizing the Asian style at this moment, or are we leaning toward the Italian verismo? Most performers will be stronger at one than the other. To me, where Shu-Ying is so good is that she's able to make those transitions very clearly and very believably."
PREVIEW: The Opera Tampa production of Madama Butterfly has performances at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. $24.50-$75. 813 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045; www.tbpac.org