Madama Butterfly

Puccini Madama Butterfly opera to libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Directed 2009 by Pier Luigi Pizzi at the Sferisterio Opera Festival Macerata. Stars Raffaella Angeletti, Annunziata Vestri, Massimiliano Pisapia, Claudio Sgura, Thomas Morris, Enrico Cossutta, Enrico Iori, Nino Batatunashvili, Antonio Maria Golini. Matteo Ferrara, Alessandro Pucci, Mirela Cisman, Roberta Carota, and Maria Elena Mariangeli. Daniele Callegari conducts the Fondazione Orchestra Regionale Delle Marche and the Coro Lirico Marchigiano "Vincenzo Bellini" (Chorus Master David Crescenzi). Set and costume design by Pier Luigi Pizzi; lighting by Sergio Rossi; choreography by Roberto Maria Pizzuto; video direction by Tiziano Mancini. Released 2011, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: B+

One of the joys of opera in HDVD is a chance to see views of and learn about the venues. The Arena Sferisterio is located in Macerata, a city and province in the Marche region of Italy; and it is featured in a summer festival called Festival Macerata. The imposing Arena was built in 1829 in a simplified and dignified classical style. It seats 3000 + and is dominated by a long, high masonry wall across the rear, because it was originally build to be the site of extravagant hand ball competitions! Outdoor stages present all kinds of problem to opera directors. High-definition recordings often turn out badly in arenas because the sets, costumes, and props designed to be seen from afar look ridiculous up close (see the hideous Tosca HDVD shot at Arena di Verona for an example of this phenomenon).

But director Pizzi was able to use his arena brilliantly for this one-set Madama Butterfly. The image of the cool Japanese cottage and gardens nestled in the warm embrace of the stone Sferisterio is remarkably beautiful. And all design elements are to normal scale and were probably intended to look great in HDVD. This is a regional production with mostly Italian signers backed up by the Fondazione Orchestra Regionale Delle Marche, not a household name. So one should not expect here the kind of elite singing and playing one gets, say, from the Wiener Staatsoper. With this in mind, I found the show to be satisfying and admirable with fine signing, acting, and directing well recorded by Tiziano Mancini. True, Cio-Cio-San is supposed to be 15 when we meet her. Raffaella Angeletti can't hide the fact that she is far closer to 51 than to 15, but she manages to win us over anyway with good singing and even better acting. (Could she do something about those yellow teeth?) This is not the A+ rendition of Madama Butterfly that we eventually will surely get. But I think it merits the grade of "B+."