A typical opera-going evening for me begins on the train.  I commute down to the city from New Haven, where I go to medical school.  It's typically a bum-numbing experience on the Metro-North, where I try to do some reading or catch up on work.  It's also a great opportunity to review the score of the opera I'm planning to see.  Madama Butterfly has never been one of my favorite Puccini operas so on this particular train ride, I wasn't eager to crack open the score.  Luckily, there was a crowd of at least ten middle-aged women in my compartment upon whom it was my pleasure to eavesdrop instead.

 

They were all middle-school teachers from Westport heading down to the city to watch their students compete in some sort of speech team contest.  The most vociferous among them was complaining about her husband, who apparently used to drive three hours up to Boston (where she went to college) every weekend to see her while they were courting.

 

But after 20 years of marriage, he was now posted in Boston for two months on some sort of assignment for his work, while she held down the fort in Westport.  And he refused to drive down to visit her or the kids on the weekends.

 

"Doesn't he love me anymore?" she moaned.  "He used to drive to see me all the time."

 

One of her fellow teachers remarked, "Life's not like Enchanted."

 

I'm pretty sure she was talking about the recent Disney movie, Enchanted.  It occurred to me that this film is an excellent reduction of the themes in Butterfly.

I'm not sure if any of you have seen it, but in Enchanted, there is a wonderful scene where Amy Adams (playing the lost princess, Giselle) is at a salon with Morgan, Patrick Dempsey's young daughter.  Morgan is advising the princess that she shouldn't wear too much make-up on her first date with the prince.

 

"But why?" asks the princess.

 

"Because boys will get ideas in their head -- and you know they're only after one thing," replies Morgan, wisely.

 

"Oh, what's that?" wonders the princess.

 

"I don't know, no one will tell me," shrugs Morgan.

 

Well, it's pretty clear what that "one thing" is, wouldn't you say?  It's certainly the "one thing" on Pinkerton's mind during the first act of Butterfly.  He's a hapless American navy lieutenant in Nagasaki who has decided to purchase a house and wife to satisfy his worldly sailor appetites.  The only problem is that Cio-Cio San, the geisha who comes with the house he's purchased, believes he is marrying her for true love.  Her level of devotion and faith in sailor-boy is nothing short of breathtaking, and is parodied aptly in movies like Enchanted, where Princess Giselle and her prince decide to marry after meeting each other only once!  In Butterfly, Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San share one ostensibly crazy night of passion, but then he disappears for 3 years, only to come back with an American wife.

 

I think the reason I've always been reticent about Butterfly is that it makes such a fool out of the tenor role, Pinkerton.  It is also a huge misrepresentation of men, portraying them as mindless sacks of seed with the motto "fertilize and forget."  Butterfly seems to happily corroborate what Robin Williams has uncharitably said about men: "God gave them a brain and a penis and not enough blood to run both at the same time."  What was Puccini thinking?  (Plus, the tenor is made to sing lines like, "Lo Yan-kee va-ga bon-do.")

Oh yes. The buffoonishness is utterly complete.

 

And yet it also has some of the most beautiful music Puccini ever wrote.  The love duet at the end of Act I --"bimba dagli occhi pieni di malia" will hopefully be the theme music of my honeymoon.  It has swells and swings that seem to be in sync with the pituitary gland.  The only problem is that my wife will have to be kept in the dark about what happens in Act II or else she'll get nervous about why I'm playing music from Butterfly.

 

Thankfully, New York City Opera's production on Wednesday proved to me that you have to keep going to live performances despite old prejudices.  Every once in a great while, you'll see something on stage that is simply electrifying and makes you fall in love with the theater all over again.  I imagine it's a lot like being a physician -- one takes care of a lot of mundane disorders and ailments, but every so often, something truly life-threatening comes in and you discover once again what a privilege it is to take care of patients and their families in such times.

 

This was the second to last performance of Butterfly this season and it featured a soprano playing Cio-Cio San (Yunah Lee) who had us nibbling at her feet from the word go.

 

She not only stole the show, she hijacked it.  At the first intermission, an elderly Italian couple seated next to me rushed outside to call their friends about the "next big thing." Numerous other fans I spoke to mentioned that she reminded them of a young Renata Scotto.  I would have to agree, except that I think she's more of a mix between a young Katia Ricciarelli and a mature Renata Scotto.  (Please click on the above youtube links to appreciate what I mean.)  Scotto was one of the greatest actresses of the opera stage and Ricciarelli had one of the most delicious and creamy soprano voices of the last 25 years.  It's incredibly rare to see a young singer so vocally endowed -- with a voice that carries over the orchestra effortlessly, yet retains focus and the floating quality necessary to portray a character who's supposed to be 15 years old!  Oh, and by the way, she can act too.  And how!

 

The production was fairly traditional compared to what I've seen in the past, but that was a welcome respite.  All the Butterfly productions I've seen in the past have been uber-modern dalliances and for some reason, they all omitted the part of the young Butterfly-Pinkerton love-child, relying on symbolism instead.  Is it really that hard to cast an adorable little boy wearing a kimono?  Once, when I saw the production in Baltimore, they used a potted plant to represent the little boy.  The only way you knew the plant was the boy was that Cio-Cio San was watering it while she sang about her son.  It's definitely more poignant when you have an actual child on the stage!

 

Something funny: during the second intermission, there were numerous couples on the mezzanine bemoaning the Spitzer-Patterson affairs, inspired by the "typically male behavior" of Pinkerton.  Poor New Yorkers have been through a lot in March.  At least there's no love-child that we know about from these extracurricular activities... yet.  (This may be where potted plants actually come in handy.)

 

After Cio-Cio San committed suicide in the final act and the curtain came down, there was a split-second of silence before the audience rose out of its reverie and started clapping violently.  When Yunah Lee took her bows, everyone was instantly on their feet.  I haven't seen that kind of excitement in an opera house in a long time.  This production featured a different cast than the version that was broadcast live on PBS last week, but I can't imagine how any evening could have been more thrilling.  It's proof that New York City Opera is continuing its tradition of being the launch pad for the next generation of opera stars.  This must have been what it was like when Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Beverly Sills, and Renee Fleming were at New York City Opera... you just knew you were witnessing history.

 

Wednesday night helped me get over my beef with Butterfly.  I've always been slightly peeved about the way it portrays men.  But with Yunah Lee singing Cio-Cio San in a production that was pitch-perfect, I was forced into being ashamed instead of angry.  That's what powerful theater can do.  I think it made all the guys in the audience feel sorry on behalf of their entire gender that they have been "fertilizing and forgetting" since the time of Abraham.  That's how touching and affecting Yunah Lee was on Wednesday.  I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her at the New York City Opera, and it will be a huge loss for us if she moves next door to the Met.  I hope she'd come back to visit.