Float Like A ‘Butterfly’ Spokane Opera Hopes To Take The 96-Year-Old Puccini Classic To New Heights

Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” has been a killer at the box office since 1904, the year the opera first appeared. But composing the opera almost killed Puccini. And its first performance brought him still another blow.

Starting Wednesday, the Spokane Opera will give six performances of “Madama Butterfly” at The Met with soprano Michelle Mattalina in the title role and tenor Gabriel Reoyo-Pazos as Pinkerton. The opera, conducted by Dean Williamson, will be sung in Italian.

“The story is pretty simple,” says Marjory Halvorson, Spokane Opera’s artistic director. “American sailor woos and weds Japanese girl, leaves, and three years later returns with his `real American wife.”’

Turning “Madama Butterfly” into an opera was not so simple.

It began life as a short story by John Luther Long and was made into a sensationally successful play by David Belasco. Puccini first encountered “Butterfly” on the stage in London in 1900. He saw its operatic possibilities and immediately arranged with Belsaco for rights to compose it.

Composing it took three years; even after it was finished, it took another three years before Puccini arrived at the version operagoers know today.

As Puccini was nearing the completion of “Madama Butterfly,” he went to dinner and a card game with friends. He was returning home in his much-prized new automobile, urging his driver to “speed it up” so that he could get back to composing. The car went off the road and down an steep embankment. The accident nearly killed the driver, and it left Puccini with a broken leg, so badly set by a village doctor that the composer walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

The premiere of “Madama Butterfly” at Milan’s famous La Scala delivered the composer another shock. Rehearsals were going so well, Puccini did something he had never done before: He allowed his family to attend the first performance - something of a risk, considering the temperamental behavior of Italian audiences then (and now).

The first-night audience at La Scala laughed at the performers, jeered at the music and booed the limping composer at his curtain call. It was a setup; the most rambunctious audience members were most likely hired by a rival composer or publisher. Three months later, the opera received its second performance in Brescia, and there “Butterfly” soared to the great success it has enjoyed ever since.

“Madama Butterfly” marks another step in the professionalization of Spokane Opera. The company, now in its 15th season, has previously given its performances in English. The company has decided to break that tradition with “Butterfly” - an Italian opera in a Japanese setting based on a story by an American author.

Mattalina, the production’s Butterfly, is a California-born soprano who was the New York District winner of the 1999 Metropolitan Opera Auditions, as well as winner of the New Jersey Opera Vocal Competition.

She made her European debut in the title role of Puccini’s “Suor Angelica,” broadcast on the Italian network RAI. And she created the role of Harriet Mosher at Santa Fe Opera’s world premiere of Tobias Picker’s “Emmeline,” broadcast on PBS.

Cuban-born, Los Angeles-based tenor Reoyo-Pazos will sing the part of Butterfly’s husband, Lt. B.F. Pinkerton. He has performed major Puccini roles as well as a variety of other parts in operas from Beethoven to Bernstein.

Mezzo-soprano Heather Peterson, who made her opera debut with Spokane Opera, is returning from her studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston to sing Butterfly’s maid, Suzuki. Baritone Randal Wagner, voice professor at Eastern Washington University, sings the role of Sharpless, the American consul.

Tenor David Sievers will sing Goro, the marriage broker, and bass-baritone John Frankauser will portray Butterfly’s furious uncle, The Bonze.

Conductor Williamson has served as a vocal coach and pianist at Seattle Opera for the past 12 years. In 1998, Williamson was named music director of the company’s Young Artist Program. He has conducted numerous opera and oratorio performances with regional companies in the Northwest and in Texas, and will make his debut with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra this fall in a Benaroya Hall concert in Seattle featuring soprano Carol Vaness as soloist.

Each of Spokane Opera’s “Madama Butterfly” performances will be preceded by a talk on the opera by Halvorson. These talks will begin 30 minutes prior to each performance.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

OPERA

`Madama Butterfly’

Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m., at The Met; repeats Sept. 6, 7:30 p.m. and Sept. 8-9, 8 p.m. Tickets: $35/$25/$15, through G&B (325-SEAT or 1-800-325-SEAT).