The Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San, known as Butterfly, is offered as a bride to the American lieutenant Pinkerton, on duty in Nagasaki. Consul Sharpless senses that he wishes to marry the Japanese girl only as a passing amusement, and warns Pinkerton that Cio-Cio-San might take his wedding vow seriously. Pinkerton carries the marriage through all the same, but after their joint wedding night he returns to America and to his fiancée Kate. When three years later he visits Nagasaki again with Kate, whom he has meanwhile married, he finds Butterfly as the mother of his child. Pinkerton rejects her, but wants to take his child with him to America. Cio-Cio-San realizes that she has been abused and dishonoured, and kills herself.

After the great success of his “Tosca” Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) found an ideal new operatic story in the drama of the American David Belasco. But when he presented the world première of his tragedia giapponese “Madama Butterfly” on 17 February 1904 at the Milano Scala it failed miserably with the public. Deeply offended, the composer took the piece off immediately. Although a few months later a performance at Brescia went down well, Puccini revised his “Madama Butterfly” several times, thereby taking the edge off the social criticism in the piece. In this thus watered-down version the opera enjoyed worldwide success.

For his production in his Puccini cycle at Antwerp the Canadian director Robert Carsen chose the more socially critical original version of the piece. He interprets Cio-Cio-San’s fate as a didactic description of lost identity in an increasingly globalized world, and “distils […] a play which steers one of the most humane and bitterly frank operas of the 20th century into artistic veritability [...]. Thus the performance is honed to become an artistic experience of the highest class.“ (Ulrich Schreiber)

 
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Giacomo Puccini

MADAMA BUTTERFLY
Tragedia giapponese in two acts
Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa

 
In Italian with German surtitles
 

Musikalische Leitung Enrico Dovico
Inszenierung Robert Carsen
Bühne und Kostüme Paul Steinberg
Dramaturgie Ian Burton
Chorleitung Christoph Kurig
 
Cio-Cio-San Nataliya Kovalova
Suzuki Katarzyna Kuncio
Kate Jessica Stavros
Pinkerton Arnold Rutkowski
Sharpless Stefan Heidemann
Goro Florian Simson
Yamadori Bruce Rankin
Bonzo Timo Riihonen
Heiratskommissar Bogdan Baciu
Standesbeamter Bo-Hyeon Mun
Mutter Marianne Tillmanns
Onkel Cesar Dima
Tante Elisabeth Adrian
Base Stephanie Blenskens
Kind Henry Schmidt
Chor Chor der Deutschen Oper am Rhein
Orchester Düsseldorfer Symphoniker