Madama Butterfly (2017)

Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera Madama Butterfly is a masterful portrayal of cultural clash and the fragility of innocent love. Directed by Marco Armiliato and Mario Gas at the Teatro Real, this production transposes the action to a 1930s film set, offering three simultaneous perspectives that combine filming, live performance and the projection of the drama onto a large black-and-white screen. At the heart of this moving production, soprano Ermonela Jaho and tenor Jorge de León portray the young Cio-Cio-San and the American officer B.F. Pinkerton.

In Nagasaki, in the late 19th century, the young and vulnerable geisha Cio-Cio-San, affectionately nicknamed Madama Butterfly, believes she has found true love and the promise of a new life by entering into a temporary marriage with handsome US Navy officer B.F. Pinkerton. Whilst those around her watch with deep concern as two irreconcilable mindsets clash, Pinkerton’s departure for his homeland and the passing of time transform her initial joy into a tense and faithful wait, during which the protagonist’s blind faith—culminating in one of the most famous arias of all time, ‘Un bel dì, vedremo’— is threatened by a reality that will call into question her sacrifices and her destiny.