Great voices, superior singing highlight ‘Madama Butterfly’ in lavish production
The opera world has more than its share of people who cling to the past, and their main complaint is: Great voices and great singing no longer exist. They need to hear Ana Maria Martinez in Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.”
Martinez played the heroine of Puccini’s drama Friday, when Houston Grand Opera brought back the story of the geisha abandoned by the American sailor who has married her on a whim. If the richness, passion and style Martinez lavished on Puccini’s music weren’t enough to restore a naysayer’s faith, I don’t know what would be.
As Martinez’s vibrant, full-bodied voice welled up again and again, it was more than a feast for the ear. It exuded the emotion and dignity that make Butterfly so captivating.
In Act 1, the warmth of Martinez’s singing conveyed the love that filled the geisha as she married Pinkerton. In Act 2, as Butterfly clung to hope Pinkerton would return to her, Martinez’s power and tenderness revealed the depth of Butterfly’s faith in him, then her voice turned bare and forlorn when the geisha reluctantly imagined the worst.
In Act 3, as hope died, Martinez sang with an abandon that not only exposed Butterfly’s desperation, but completed her growth into a larger-thanlife figure.
If there was one quality Martinez lacked, it was the touch of girlishness Butterfly should have in Act 1, during which Pinkerton exclaims that he’s smitten by that very charm. But as the geisha’s inner battle between hope and fear grew, Martinez’s Butterfly embodied it: crying, then composing herself; fidgeting giddily when she thought the American consul, Sharpless, was about to reveal good news; taking the dagger from its box with fearsome resoluteness at the opera’s climax.
The rest of the production largely equalled Martinez’s musical and dramatic force. Tenor Alexey Dolgov sang with a ring, freshness and fire that captured Pinkerton’s ardor in Act 1 and his remorse in Act 3, when the sailor returned to Butterfly’s home but shrank from facing her.
Dolgov also treated Puccini’s music to dashes of delicacy that many tenors can’t muster.
Baritone Scott Hendricks’ Sharpless had a sonorous voice and humane demeanor, and he opened the last scene’s trio eloquently. As Butterfly’s servant Suzuki, mezzo-soprano Sofia Selowsky complemented Martinez through her voice’s warmth and weight.
Tenor John Easterlin cut an obsequious figure as the marriage broker Goro, but he sometimes was nearly inaudible.
Christopher Oram’s set evoked the economy of Japanese art, and director Louisa Muller laid out graceful tableaux and helped the principals interact compellingly.