Music by
Giacomo Puccini
Choreography by
David Nixon
Butterfly
Desire Samaai
Pinkerton
Daniel de Andrade
Suzuki
Lynsey Brown
Butterfly's father
the Bonze
Prince Yamadori
Jonathan Renna
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Madame Butterfly
by Giacomo Puccini
Sadler's Wells
13 March 2006
Puccini's music has made the Madame Butterfly story a supreme statement of innocence, love, yearning and betrayal. The opera is a standard classic, which never fails to move, so poignant is the simple story and so heartrendingly powerful the music.
But if you thought that the combination of story and music could not be given a statement that wrung even more from its intrinsic pity and pathos, you would be wrong: for David Nixon, in a work of genius, has done just that. By framing the tale between two kabuki-style episodes showing the suicides first of Butterfly's father and then her own, and by emphasising the contrast between Pinkerton's casual exploitativeness and Butterfly's exquisite gift of devotion, Nixon has given the narrative a sharper, clearer, more stinging definition even than the opera; and the result is profoundly moving.
There is eloquence and clarity in Nixon's choreography which suits it perfectly to this narrative of emotion. His intentions were beautifully served by Desire Samaai as Butterfly, who in the pas de deux that reconfigures the opera's beautiful long love aria at the end of the first act, delicately blossoms from shyness to self-giving with wonderful skill. It happens against the earlier background of Pinkerton and two fellow officers out on the town, during which he offhandedly purchases Butterfly as a temporary wife. In Nixon's retelling Pinkerton leaves her when his ship is bound from port with a lightness and lack of consideration that contrasts painfully with her mixture of delight and ineffable yearning, an optimistic, trusting yearning that fills Butterfly when subsequently she thinks of him, waiting for his return when the blossoms will fall. All this is enacted by Desire Samaai with admirably aching realism: she is a consummate actress as well as a remarkable dancer.
There is more direct psychological truth in this ballet than the opera, partly because of Nixon's fine narrative gift and partly because he has had the freedom to tauten the story line and make use of the music to suit. The framing kabuki-style episodes are a further touch of genius; the Japanese music that accompanies them flows seamlessly into and out of Puccini as if part of the original conception.
In three cameos respectively as Butterfly's father, the Bonze and Prince Yamadori, Jonathan Renna performed strikingly. This is a handsomely gifted company, and as material for David Nixon's choreographic gifts and his artistic direction, there is an enormous amount to relish in its offerings. AC Grayling
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