Powerful staging of classic

A LADY in a black trouser suit walks on to the stage ahead of curtain up and announces: “Anne Sophie Duprels, playing the part of Cio-Cio-San, has a bad cold...”

(One could imagine the understudy ready to spring into action, vocal cords aquiver, and the audience poised to deflate).

“She WILL sing (understudy relaxes again; audience offers a relieved/ encouraging ripple of applause)... but if her singing falls below her very high standard, she begs your pardon.”

Thus were the critics disarmed ahead of the first performance in Opera North’s spring season at the Theatre Royal – and the first of an opera that is always the absolute banker (count yourself fortunate to get a ticket at this late stage).

But anyone expecting a performance enlived by a hacking cough or explosive sneezes into the sleeve of a kimono were to be... well, perhaps disappointed is the wrong word. Let’s say confounded.

Anne Sophie Duprels, returning to the role after impressing in two previous Opera North seasons (2007-8 and 2011-12), confounded with a spellbinding performance.

Cold or no cold, the French soprano was magnificent, the voice seemingly as sound as a bell.

Puccini’s opera contains some of the most hauntingly beautiful music in the canon with Un bel di vedremo (One fine day we shall see) being the very essence of tragic wistfulness.

You could have heard the proverbial pin drop as it soared over Tuesday night’s full house. The acting, too, was first class and brought a lump to this audience member’s throat. Madama Butterfly was premiered in Milan in 1904. Music aside, you wonder how the story resonated back then.

It certainly resonates now as a monstrous injustice. An American sailor (Pinkerton) takes a Japanese ‘wife’ from an unscrupulous broker, essentially just to pass the time in comfort.

In due course, as he says himself, he will go home to take an American bride.

Cio-Cio-San is just 15 – there’s an emphasis on the age in Tim Albery’s production and I wonder if that was there back in 1904 – and she believes in her Japanese wedding vows and the love of Pinkerton.

She is betrayed by all, of course. Pinkerton leaves and, as promised, marries again in the US of A, unaware that his Japanese ‘bride’ has fathered his son.

The injustice makes the 21st Century hackles rise to the extent that Merunas Vitulskis, the Lithuanian tenor cast as Pinkerton, earned a final curtain ovation that was tinged with panto-esque boos.

That was one more sign of a good production, an absorbed audience rooting for a young and wronged woman who bears her pain with dignity and stoicism, supported only by maid Suzuki (beautifully sung by Ann Taylor). Those who could help her, like Sharpless (Peter Savidge), the US Consul, can ultimately offer only money, which the girl rejects.

It’s the age-old story of the powerful abusing the small and weak, the older male exploiting the younger female, but it’s Cio-Cio-San whose courage earns the final thunderous applause.

Opera North also performs Don Giovanni tomorrow and Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) on Saturday.