At the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome Madama Butterfly, protagonist Eleonora Buratto, on the podium Roberto Abbado

Back to Rome Opera House Madama Butterfly, the 'Japanese tragedy' by Giacomo Puccini, on stage for eight evenings from 16 to 25 June 2023 in the staging of Alex Ollé de La Fura dels Baus. Created in collaboration with Opera Australia / Sydney Opera House, the staging was created for the 2015 summer season of Caracalla, revived in 2016, then proposed at the Circus Maximus in 2021 and now adapted for the Teatro Costanzi stage.

On the podium of the Lirico capitolino he climbs Roberto Abbado, who interprets Puccini's masterpiece for the first time, while the soprano Eleonora Buratto he makes his debut in the role of Cio-cio-san in Europe, after his recent extraordinary success at the Metropolitan in New York. Protagonists with her on stage, Dmytro Popov like Pinkerton, Anna Maria Chiuri as Suzuki and Roberto Frontali in those of Sharpless. Carlo Bosi it will be Goro, Luciano Leoni Uncle Bonzo.

In the performances of 17, 20, 22 and 25 June it is Maria Teresa Leva to give voice and face to Cio-Cio-san, on 17, 22, 25 Luciano Ganci it will be Pinkerton, Giovanni Meoni, Sharpless.

The scenes are from Alfons Flores, the costumes of Lluc Castells, the videos of Franc Aleu and lights of Marco Filibeck. The orchestra and choir, conducted by Ciro Visco, I'm from the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.

Madama Butterfly, opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini on booklet by Luigi Illica is Giuseppe Giacosa, is based on the play of the same name by David Belasco, which Puccini saw in London in 1900 and was deeply impressed. The famous American playwright, impresario and director - who in the course of his long career found himself writing, directing or producing more than one hundred works - in turn had obtained the text from the homonymous novel by John Luther Long, published in 1898 and inspired by the stories of the writer's sister, who had visited Japan with her husband, a Methodist missionary.

To compose the opera, Puccini read up on the customs and traditions of the Rising Sun, also drawing inspiration from another semi-autobiographical story, Madame Chrysantheme of Pierre Loti, writer and French navy officer, member of the Académie française, who in 1895 had left for Japan, marrying and then abandoning a young local girl.

Puccini's opera in the vision of Alex Ollé, one of the creative directors of the overwhelming Catalan company La Fura dels Baus, takes on a contemporary connotation, with an almost cinematic imprint, and all the more exciting the farther it is from stereotyped oleographs: "We propose a definitive meaning of the work as a loss of paradise - explained the director - Pinkerton's character becomes a symbol of a neoliberal tsunami , the last consequence of ferocious colonialism, capable of destroying everything”.

Madama Butterfly is one of the great masterpieces of opera – says the director Roberto Abbado – and it's extraordinary how he manages to arouse emotions, to keep the audience in his grip, to move them, while maintaining extreme logic and coherence in outlining the evolution of the characters' psychological drama.

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(Top, Madama-Butterfly, photocredit Yasuko Kageyama, Opera di Roma; Eleonora Buratto, credit Dario Acosta)