Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Royal Opera House, London: Madama Butterfly




The main event for my husband and I on our two night trip to London to celebrate forty years of togetherness, was an evening in the Royal Opera House in London. When we stay in London we like to walk everywhere because you see so much more that way and London is such a great city.

Steve had scrambled on line to get tickets for this production of Madama Butterfly quite some time ago because we thought we deserved a big treat for peacefully surviving so many years together. We have not been to the ROH for a good few years now and the big night out was well due.


We wanted to arrive at the ROH with plenty of time to look around and managed that easily walking in at 6.30pm for the 7.30 pm performance and did our reminder exploration before the doors were open to the auditorium. We then located our ticketed numbered places that were actually standing places, but they are still marked with numbers. We took some photos and then sat in the seats to rest for a while, in seats that were right by the position that we would stand to watch the opera.


Going to the Opera is very expensive it’s true and if you want to sit in the best seats you will pay anything up to and sometimes more than £270 each! That is how come we folk from the sticks were happy to gain admission for a major performance for a mere £13 each. OK we had to stand, but people stand at football matches happily enough and at pop concerts quite often and compared to that, this was luxury standing. We paid about that to take a tour of the opera house in Dresden last summer, without a performance.

I was able to stay in my seat at the end of the row in front of us until two minutes before the start. Were standing at the back of the Stalls Circle, and we were no more than ten feet away to the side from people in the £190 Orchestra Stalls seats. We would be able to see almost all of the stage and there were small screens just in front with the translated subtitled words shown.

Immediately in front of the crimson velour covered resting rail, was a space for two wheel chairs. An elderly gentleman had positioned his lady wife’s wheelchair over the marked spot on the floor and he took the loose chair behind her. At the last moment another man in a motorised wheelchair drove in with his companion/helper by his side  he did not take the marked spot on the floor but instead moved in semi sideways behind the seats in front of him to give himself better vision and I have to say even though it is probably not very PC, that he rather boisterously reversed to the end of row seat, next to him, so that the backpack hanging on the back of his wheelchair was squashing the poor lady who was seated there, but bless her, she didn’t say a word even though it was obvious that she would not be able to see hardly anything behind that man. I thought both he and his companion were very rude in their inconsideration of her. The position that he should have taken was clearly visible in front of us. I could not believe that a staff member did not intervene. Poor lady!


Curtain up time came and the title role was played marvelously by Ermonela Jaho who was the most delightful Butterfly and Marcelo Puente was excellent as Pinkerton who sang beautifully but the part caused him to be boo-ed before being cheered at the end, but he did not take that to heart and smiled as if to say ‘Well I didn’t write it’, after treating poor little Butterfly to atrociously.

There was a surprise hero of the day, Ulrich Reβ from the Bavarian State Opera, who flew in from Munich in the afternoon, a few hours before the performance, when Carlo Bosi was taken ill and could not play Goro, the broker who sets Pinkerton up with the innocent spirited Geisha. How brave to step in with no rehearsal, in strange opera house, in another city at the drop of a hat; Good man, and well rewarded at the end by the audience for saving the day.

Poor tragic Butterfly fluttered around in her loose silk kimono, daintily giving the part its name. There was another couple standing right next to us and that lady cracked up and into tears at about the same time as me; at the end of Act II As Butterfly waited for that bounder Pinkerton, to come back to her. Sitting completely upright all night, with her little boy asleep on her knee, her maid also sleeping beside her. The production made this an extremely long agony for her and for the softies in the audience, I thought I was going to have an asthma attack trying not to sob out loud. Both the man with the other lady and Steve were both doing the ‘There, there dear’ patting and stroking of their partners.

The little boy playing Butterfly’s young son was amazingly well behaved and I think he must have been fitted with earplugs to have sat so still whilst his mother sang her heart out right to her sacrificial death to ensure that the father and his wife would take him home to America.

It was a wonderful evening and I was glad of the walk back to our hotel, giving me time to compose myself once more. 


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