Madam butterfly

Thursday

Richard Bratby

Hits you where it hurts: Welsh National Opera’s Madam Butterfly reviewed

‘It’s generally agreed that in contemporary practice, this opera proposes significant ethical and cultural problems,’ says the director Lindy Hume in the programme book for her new production of Madam Butterfly, and if you’ve just shelled out 75 quid in the expectation of attractive scenery and luscious tunes, that’s you told. In truth, it’s rarely advisable to read what a director thinks about their own work, at least until after the show, when it can serve as a bemusing footnote to the evening’s entertainment. Ah, so that’s why they were wearing pink beehive wigs! If a director is any good at their job, it’ll come across on stage without any

Friday

Lloyd Evans

Madam Butterfly and a pointless discussion about colonialism

Welsh National Opera’s new version of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly opens today. To help audiences understand the opera’s historical significance this week the producers staged an online discussion, ‘The Long Arm of Imperialism.’  It was chaired by professor Priyamvada Gopal who teaches postcolonial studies at Cambridge. She began by reminding us that many of the greatest operas in the canon were written in the 19th century, ‘when 85 per cent of the earth was, in some form or other, annexed to the cultural project…so there is no culture untouched by that project.’ In addition, she said, the concept of west-versus-east was a creation of colonialism: ‘The familiar categories of the west and the east…are