Madame Butterfly. Music by Giacomo Puccini. Directed by John Bell. Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on John Luther Long's short story Madame Butterfly. Engliah translation and libretto by Peter Hutchinson. Conducted by Warwick Stengårds. Opera Australia. The Canberra Theatre, September 6 to 8. canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 62752700.
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John Bell seems a little impatient with the talk of "yellowface" that have been circulating in show business circles.
The argument goes that Asian characters should always be played by Asian actors rather than making up white performers to look "yellow", and it also extends to other ethnicities.
The veteran actor and director, who is redirecting his 10-year-old Opera Australia production of Madame Butterfly for its Australian tour, says, "If you're going to do Madame Butterfly you have no choice unless you import a cast of Asian actors.
"That's nonsense."
The reality, he says, is that in directing the opera he has to cast the best singers he can find. Not that he's unsympathetic to some of the underlying issues (he says "blackface" casting would not be done nowadays in theatre) and he always intended to be respectful and traditional, seeking advice on matters such as choreography, protocol and social behaviour to make the production as authentic as possible.
"We do have a couple of Asian actors in the show - one of them is Butterfly," he says. And the non-Asian performers don't try to play stereotypical Japanese characters - Bell didn't want that at all.
"We're very sympathetic to the Japanese people in the show," he says.
And, he points out, in recent years particularly there's been a welcome advance in colour and gender-blind casting, bringing innovation rather than novelty into theatre, with black people in roles such as Hamlet and women playing parts such as King Lear. Bell Shakespeare, the company he founded and of which he was formerly the artistic director, had Kate Mulvany playing Richard III in a critically acclaimed production last year.
"It's essential we have that kind of casting."
Bell's production of Madame Butterfly has been updated from the original early 20th century period to the American occupation of Japan in 1945, after World War II in Nagasaki to highlight for a modern audience the issues of colonialism and Americanisation in the original libretto . But the plot remains the same, Bell says: "taking a local girl, toying with her and deserting her".
In the opera, American lieutenant Pinkerton (Matthew Reardon) meets Cio-Cio San, or Butterfly (Sharon Zhai), a 15-year-old Japanese girl, and marries her, intending to leave her and find an American wife. Not knowing this, Cio-Cio San has converted to Christianity before the wedding and her uncle, the Bonze (Steven Gallop) curses her.
Pinkerton departs shortly after they marry and Cio-Cio San waits three years for his return. She won't listen to her maid Suzuki,(Anna Yun), who doubts Pinketon will return, or the marriage broker Goro (Michael Petruccelli) who wants to find her another husband.
Eventually, the American consul, Sharpless (Andrew Boran), brings Cio-Cio San a letter from Pinkerton that informs her he is coming back to Japan. Pinkerton has an umpleasant surprise for her, but she has one or two for him, too.
Bell's production is in English rather than the original Italian since the production could not take surtitles on tour and he wanted the story to be clear to all audiences.
"It's much better to sing it in English - it's more accessible and less frightening," he says,
A children's chorus from each town or city the opera is touring will perform in the opera. The young singers will be rehearsed in each place by someone local, with a music director from the opera travelling a few days ahead to give each chorus a final polish.
There's a practical purpose to this for the company - Bell says, "You sell 100 tickets before you get there" - to family and friends - but he adds that it's also a way for Opera Australia to get involved with the different communities and gives young people performing opportunities.
One cast member who has been given a great performing opportunity with his first Opera Australia role - a lead - on the three-month tour is Matthew Reardon, 30, who plays B.F. Pinkerton. It's not his first encounter with the opera, however.
"I sang in the Madame Butterfly chorus on Opera on the Harbour a few years back," he says. While listening to Pinkerton he enjoyed the character and his music.
"When five or six years later I got the call-up [to play Pinketon] I said, 'Absolutely!'''
Asked what he thinks of the character, "I'm still working him out, to be honest.
"I feel that he he's maybe someone who's not really aware of his behaviour and his actions - in the end he's quite remorseful about what he's done, but he has to see the destructive act to see what happened."
Reardon thinks Pinkerton "lives each moment in the present" and when he sings the romantic duet with Butterfly is very much in love with her even if his plans do not include her.
Singing in English to make the opera more accessible doesn't bother Reardon, whose English-language opera performances so far have included Poulenc's (originally French) Dialogues of the Carmelites, Williamson's English Eccentrics and, in California, Smetana's (originally Czech) The Bartered Bride.
Raised in Bankstown, Reardon began singing in a school choir but studied communications at university. He worked in PR but never lost his passion for music and decided to pursue it.
He's a graduate from the Dame Nellie Melba Opera Trust Program in Melbourne and the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts and also completed his Masters of Opera in Wales while on a full scholarship from the Australian International Opera Award. Reardon also worked with Marilyn Horne in the US and made his professional debut in Australia, in Pecan Summer, the first Indigenous opera by Yorta Yorta soprano Deborah Cheetham.
