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Review of Madama Butterfly from
the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tuesday, January 28, 2003 by Laura Stewart
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'Fly
to' St. Augustine for passionate opera
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By
LAURA STEWART
FINE
ARTS WRITER
Last updated: Jan 27,
11:08 PM
ST. AUGUSTINE -- First Coast
Opera's "Madama Butterfly" shows exactly why generations
loved opera.
Not a brittle art form, nor merely singing, dancing,
acting or the scenic and costume arts, this is opera -- all of
the above, rolled into one passionate, gritty and mesmerizing
theatrical package.
The St.
Augustine company captured the heart of Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera
in Sunday's performance, as they surely will in performances this
Saturday and Sunday.
In
Pedro Menendez High School's small Performing Arts Center, with its
orchestra's 12 members seated before the low stage, the story of an
American Navy captain's fraudulent marriage to a native Japanese girl
sprang to life.
Not
only that, First Coast's full-throttle opera took on added dimensions.
Easy to follow, thanks to overhead translations and the closeness of
director Ron DeFesi and the cast, it transported its audience from Act
I's charming wedding scene to the final betrayal of Cio-Cio-San
(Butterfly, sung by soprano Karen Adair).
Along
the way, it touched on emotions, alliances and attitudes that are
alive and well even in today's more sophisticated, cynical climate.
From
the start, as anxious minor chords crept into the score, Puccini
signaled that the audience should be afraid for Cio-Cio-San, a
trusting child whose nickname underlines her fragility.
And
right away, as the portly Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton
(tenor Paul Pitts) negotiated with Goro (tenor Jim Yao), the craven
marriage broker, and U.S. Consul Sharpless (baritone David Stork of
Port Orange), the contrasts between love and lust, youth and age, prey
and predator were alarmingly clear.
If
"Madama Butterfly" were only about the American's
thoughtless destruction of natives in occupied nations, or even about
the social conditions that made it possible, the opera's rich,
impassioned arias still would make it worth hearing.
But
First Coast gave its version the greater subtlety it deserves. And at
the same time the St. Augustine company emphasized the complex
characters of a girl,who could delude herself enough to turn her back
on her own culture for a foreign stranger, and a man who could trick
her, then regret his betrayal, however slightly.
Such is
the simple, everyday stuff of tragedy, handled sensitively.
Without voices
powerful and polished enough to transmit its crushing passions and, at
the opposite end of the emotional scale, its devastating disregard for
others' feelings, however, it would be mere melodrama.
First
Coast walked a fine line with its energetic, direct
"Butterfly," and it succeeded in cutting to the opera's
essentials.
Even as
the audience pities Cio-Cio-San, it shares the impatience of her maid,
Suzuki (mezzo soprano Janet Rabe-Meyer, also of Port Orange) and the
pandering, ineffectual disapproval of Sharpless.
And,
consistently in the three-hour, three-act opera, it enthralls its
audience with the sheer, irresistible beauty of the tragedy, as
characters express universal emotions too extravagant and too painful
to withstand everyday life.
Grandiose
and deeply satisfying, with colorful sets and lush, capably performed
score, First Coast's "Butterfly" works the provocative magic
of opera, personal and profoundly affecting.
laura.stewart@news-jrnl.com----
Opera Performances
WHAT:
First Coast Opera's "Madame Butterfly."
WHEN:
8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.
WHERE:
Pedro Menendez High School Performing Arts Center, State Road 206, St.
Augustine.
TICKETS:
$20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens and students;
(904) 471-8971.
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