Returning once more to ENO – a homage to its late director – Anthony Minghella’s 2005 Madam Butterfly is looking as glossily beautiful as ever, if still a little vacant behind the eyes. Superficially a riot of Orientalist fantasy and exoticism, Butterfly reveals itself as a simple and universal tale of devotion in the face of deception and cruelty. Minghella’s production bucks the recent trend of playing down the opera’s exotic elements, embracing the expansive and colourful gestures of Eastern theatre, and his use of moving screens and gossamer curtains of blossom to create Butterfly’s home lent real pathos to the fragility of her ‘corner of America in Japan’.

Returning as Butterfly, Judith Howarth (pictured) retained all her purity and clarity of tone, presenting a heroine driven by a comprehending adult devotion rather than the childlike naivety one sometimes sees. Providing dramatic support and lending her characteristically rich vocals to the part of Suzuki was Christine Rice, whose weary and anxious handmaiden contrasted nicely to Howarth’s youthful energy.

Bryan Hymel, as Pinkerton, and Brian Mulligan, as Sharpless, were both making their ENO debut. Mulligan was a delight, presenting the difficult character of the consul with a pleasing fullness of tone and elegantly understated acting. Hymel, by contrast, proved himself to be much the weakest link of the cast, delivering a tone that was gripped and tended flat. His straining efforts were no match for the ease of Howarth, whose role in duets must have been made harder by the difficulty of blending with his strangely swallowed sound.

A word must also be said of David Parry’s libretto – a new English translation for this production. Spoiled as we have been by Amanda Holden’s lyrically vernacular translations at ENO, his text seemed both crass and lumpy, actively intruding into the flow of the vocal line on many occasions, with particular low points including Sharpless’s expostulation of, “Goddam that bastard Pinkerton!”.

As a tribute to Minghella this Butterfly is perhaps a little too honest, exposing not only the strengths but also the consistent weaknesses of Hollywood’s favourite thinking-man’s-director. When painting his large and beautiful abstracts Minghella too often smoothes over the cracks and creases of specificity, forgetting that it is in these fault-lines that emotion and meaning take shape.

Captivated, like Pinkerton, by the smoothly painted face of the geisha, his Butterfly is all about the façade of beauty, while Puccini’s is far more interested in the messy and inelegant human beings that lie beneath.

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