‘Madam Butterfly’ at Dubai Opera review

Like a gentle breeze, love comes a-knocking at little Butterfly’s door, saving her from the life of a geisha. She’s bought for a mere 100 yen by a US soldier, Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, in 1980’s Japan.

Like a warm tickle, love wraps her in its embrace. Safe in that knowledge, the 15-year-old (played excellently by Karah Son) gives up her religion, her family and her previous life for the comfort of her husband’s arms. But perhaps their exchange — she says, ‘Don’t people abroad capture butterflies and pin their wings’; and he agrees — is a premonition of things to come.

Like a whirlwind, despair claims our little Butterfly. She has a child and is left alone for three years while the officer (Jonathan Burton) is away. And she must comfort herself with the fact that he ensures the rent is paid.

Like a brutal tempest, love kills her in the end. Betrayed by her husband — he has remarried — Madam Butterfly commits suicide to give their child a better, unencumbered future.

This operatic performance, set in 1980 Nagasaki, is sung in Italian and about the collision of East and West, yet it’s appeal is universal and timeless. The play has a telling moment when Butterfly says that in Japan a man need only drive a woman out of their home for a divorce; in America, a man must convince a judge before a marriage is over.

The music helps. Set to Puccini’s score — performed with aplomb — and with songs such as the aria Un bel dì, sung by Cio-Cio-San (Madam Butterfly) as she waits for her beloved, this is a moving journey.

And with heart-wrenching performances from the servant Suzuki (Rebecca Afonwy-Jones), who is just as brokenhearted as her mistress over the soldier’s betrayal, to David Kempster’s US consul, this gripping two-hour-45-minute tale told using a clever set — simple but evocative of the time — is sure to have you damp eyed, and annoyed.

That’s the thing about love, isn’t it? The gentle breeze carries shards of glass sometimes.

Don’t miss it!

Madam Butterfly runs until March 4 at Dubai Opera. Tickets,starting at Dh300, available at dubaiopera.com