1) Antoinette Halloran tries her best to be sixteen again 2) Roger Howell's voice was exceptional
A night at the opera
22.3.14 - Maria read about the Melbourne Opera Company's production of Madame Butterfly in Arts Hub and her curiosity was aroused 'cause she's never been to the Athenaeum and neither of us had seen Madame Butterfly so we decided to go and check it out last night. We parked near the Arts Centre and jumped onto a tram and got there in plenty of time so we then elected to have a bite to eat in Bistrot D'Orsay, the restaurant conveniently right next door to the theatre. We were quite fortunate to get a table as the place was nearly full, but the food was delish (I had the bouillabaisse and Maria had the goat's cheese souffle) and we didn't even have to go outside to get to the Athenaeum foyer as there's a door linking the two establishments. The bad news was that as we were heading up the stairs to our cheap-ish upper circle seats, Maria discovered the theatre's toilets were out of action (!) and so we had to wait for the intermission before finding some alternatives - over the road in Maria's case.
Almost as soon as the show started we twigged it was being sung in English; nevertheless I was only understanding a small percentage of it and asked Maria during the intermission to check Wikipedia on her iPhone and read me a synopsis of the libretto. Pretty soon she had attracted a knot of people also keen to know the story so I wasn't the only one struggling to interpret what was being sung.
I did notice they'd bunged up Cio Cio's age to a legal-in-some-countries sixteen years old (from a naughty sounding fifteen) and consequently I suppose the casting for the role of Butterfly is always going to be problematic given the pool of talent available to a state company. I suppose finding a sixteen year old who could sing a lead in any opera's going to be problematic anywhere, but try as she might, Antoinette Halloran (pic 1) certainly didn't look sixteen - or Japanese for that matter.
But opera is all about the suspension of disbelief, so, despite ample evidence to the contrary I was just about able to imagine a younger Cio Cio - and even a younger Ben Pinkerton - but my poor brain went into overload when Kate, allegedly Pinkerton's American wife appeared near the end of the show looking old enough to be mistaken for his mother.
Honestly there was so much not to commend about the Melbourne Opera Company's presentation of Madame Butterfly - the onset of rain clattering onto the theatre roof in the second act was a highlight for instance - that you could miss the fundamental soundness of the opera itself. Compared to my only other recently seen opera Turandot, MB is is an absolute treasure, with a strong, coherent and still relevant libretto, with consistently engaging and occasionally memorable, if tragically inclined music, which I suppose is the lot of most opera when you think about it.
Of the voices the pick of the cast was Roger Howell, (pic 2) who played the hapless American consul, Mr Sharpness. His voice was accurate and assured and had a pleasantly sonorous timbre, qualities mostly absent in the other soloists' voices. I was thinking about operatic singing technique as we were listening. When I was young I thought the vibrato sounded 'old' and it's true - many singers of all persuasions adopt a vibrato as they get older. As a result, what you hear is an approximation of a note, rather than the actual note and diction also suffers from the techniques employed in producing a loud sound. From the little recorded evidence available, castrati sang more like boy sopranos (or trebles) with less vibrato than their female counterparts. Maybe the fashion will return or maybe opera as we know it will die. I probably will not live long enough to find out.