A Puppet at the Met

"Madama Butterfly": Liping Zhang as the title character in the 2011 production, created by Anthony Minghella, at the Metropolitan Opera. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

"Madama Butterfly" at the Metropolitan Opera

 

Last night The Metropolitan Opera used a puppet in the role of Mme Butterfly's son. At least Cio Cio San didn't actually throw her voice into it, as did the mother at the Metropolitan Playhouse last month, where a ventriloquist's dummy played the role of a hymn - singing infant. I prefer the usual mouth - breathing three year old who is much less likely to upstage the hari kiri. This production of Butterfly involved such minimalism at its most excessive. The vast Metropolitan Opera stage was largely unused, except for utterly ravishing perspectives, and the orchestra and singers were more muted than usual, probably to avoid melodrama, but what is more melodramatic than musically - accompanied belly cutting? Even at the finale, as the tsunami of blood poured across the stage, I found myself longing for something slightly more... gut - wrenching.