Madama Butterfly to open on Sydney Harbour stage, with cultural consultant

Opera Australia has engaged a cultural consultant to ensure the depiction of Japanese characters in Madama Butterfly is ‘respectful’.

Soprano Karah Son and tenor Diego Torre in the Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour revival of Madama Butterfly. Picture: Don Arnold / WireImage

Opera Australia has engaged a cultural consultant for its outdoor staging of Madama Butterfly, one of the most popular operas in the repertoire but also a hazard for modern sensibilities, given its European depiction of Japanese characters.

The Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour production is staged over the water and features a rising moon to evoke the romantic fantasy of a Japanese teenager, Cio-Cio San, and her fatal attraction to an American naval officer.

“It represents the eroticism of power, when Madama Butterfly falls in love,” said the opera’s Spanish director, Alex Olle.

“The moon is part of this world of enchantment; I wanted to relate the fragility of Cio-Cio San with the garden, to think about a lost paradise.”

Set in Nagasaki, Madama Butter­fly is an Italian opera by Giacomo Puccini with an Italian libretto based on an American story. Recent productions around the world have been criticised for casting singers who are not Japanese or of Asian descent in the Japanese roles.

In Sydney, Cio-Cio San will be played on different nights by Karah Son and Eva Kong, who both were born in South Korea. Mexican-Australian tenor Diego Torre appears as Pinkerton, the faithless American officer.

Olle and revival director Susana Gomez have been working with cultural consultant Mayu Iwasaki to help ensure the depiction of Japanese characters – not all sung by Asian singers – is “respectful”. But Olle said it was important that consultation did not become censorship.

“We should be able to express ideas and to show in a respectful way anything on stage,” he said. “In this case there was no problem. But (a consultant) should not limit the work of the creator.”

Gomez said it was acceptable to cast a non-Japanese singer as Cio-Cio San, just as it was acceptable to cast a non-Spanish singer as Carmen.

Opening at Mrs Macquaries Point on Friday, Madama Butterfly is one of the most successful of the HOSH presentations, having first been staged in 2014 and also three times in Rome.

The HOSH series has been supported by reclusive Japanese businessman Haruhisa Handa since its inception in 2012 and current arrangements are due to expire this year. OA chief executive Fiona Allan said the company was in discussions with Dr Handa to extend the series for another three years.