Madama Butterfly Review: Star Soprano Celine Byrne Excels as Cio-Cio-San
In the Irish National Opera’s production of Puccini’s 1904 Madama Butterfly, Celine Byrne portrays Cio-Cio-San as a confident and forward-looking woman rather than naive and vulnerable.
The performance opens with a brief, bustling overture that transitions into a seemingly trivial discussion about traditional Japanese homes and their sliding partitions. Designer Kat Heath magnifies this minor detail into a focal point of the set design, using enormous movable panels that dominate the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre stage.
- The large panels are striking and versatile, enabling both intimate and expansive scene settings through lateral and horizontal shifts.
- Their neutral tones adapt to different moods and times of day, enhanced by Jake Wiltshire’s lighting.
- The panels allow for surprising reveals and disappearances of characters, sometimes mimicking camera zoom effects that add a cinematic quality to the opera.
Daisy Evans, the director, incorporates these visual effects to enhance the emotional immediacy throughout the production.
“Somehow they are not distracting and allow for surprises and for either revealing characters or suddenly removing them from view. And sometimes they create the illusion of watching through a camera lens, zooming in, zooming out.”
This innovative staging complements Byrne’s compelling and nuanced interpretation, giving the classic opera a fresh, vivid energy.
Author’s summary: Celine Byrne's assured performance and innovative stage design in Irish National Opera’s Madama Butterfly combine to create a powerful, emotionally immediate production.
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