The highlight of my 73rd birthday weekend was a 3D performance of Madame Butterfly with the Canadian Chinese Zhang Liping as Madam Butterfly and the experience was then followed by listening to the soundtrack of the stage musical Miss Saigon which is based on the Madam Butterfly story and where I have seen the stage show four times such was my enthusiasm for it.
It was a glorious sunny and warm day as I set off to go through the Tyne tunnel and indeed not a day for the inside of anywhere. I set off down the hill and was astonished to find that Ocean Road, the main thoroughfare between the town centre, passing the row of over a bed and breakfast hotels on one side and a similar number and more of restaurants on the other was blocked off.
On Monday morning because of a forecast of another good weather day I walked down and alongside the park before turning into ocean Road from the park end I discovered the cause of the blocking. The former public house and over recent year’s nightclub bar has almost been demolished. The closure of the building was no surprise as a number of other similar establishments have also been closed with one presently being turned into offices although even this work appears to have come to a halt. The demolition of the building is a surprise.
As I rounded the corner on my way to the Health centre for a blood test I was not surprised to see the John Wright centre boarded up. It was one of the first multi use centres for those with disabilities and in my time a chapel and a bar lounge had been added although its use was reduced with the creation of a modern work centre for those with a learning disability and the of visual disability creating their own centre. Given that in my time a purpose built centre embracing people with disabilities and the able bodied had been created in Jarrow and then in the late 1980’s a state of the art centre for multi disability use and for the elders was purpose built in Hebburn the financial justification for the three centres disappeared long ago if it ever existed. That they did reflect the finest aspect of a people based local democracy.
The exploration of what was going on meant I arrived later than intended at the Health centre and found 12 others before me although by the time the second block of ten people were called into the waiting area for the tests the 29th individual had been reached. However even with only two chairs the process was speedy and I was out within half an hour of arriving with time to head for a bacon roll and coffee at the Wetherspoons’ and an excellent coffee it was and then some shopping at the supermarket.
On Sunday I used my new Tyne Tunnel electronic payment disk for the first time. This is a solid plastic disk which fits to the windscreen with a sucker and which registers at the any of the barriers as having paid £1.24 instead of the cash charge of £1.40. One adds amounts in minimum of £15 which provides 6 return journeys about my average need for a year giving and overall saving of only £2 but more significant if not having to find the small change and a faster passage especially now that queuing has been eliminated with the opening of both tunnels. The tag costs £11.40 to provide and is made in China, where else?
I have re-examined my previous reporting on Madam Butterfly where I first saw a relay also on a birthday three years ago. That was a live relay from the Metropolitan New York and then I watched again on Internet connected TV. The 3D version is a filmed event specially constructed to give the impression of a performance before a live audience but where the need for close ups and on stage movement makes filming with the special cameras impossible with an audience although the audience reaction is added at the end.
There is only a limited build up this time and at one level nothing of the audience excitement before the raising of the curtain. Similarly there were no intervals with only a brief pause between the three acts so the performance lasts two hours instead of the usual two and three quarters although traditionally the opera is performed with only one interval. However this had the impact of increasing the emotional tension and sense of dooms despite everyone being familiar with the story as few in the well filled cinema theatre were under fifty. For some reason there was no lighting which made locating seats a problem as a consequence.
The two productions are significantly different with the Minghella production creating a vivid visual presentation which included the use of puppets and dancers as well as a fair size chorus of wedding guests of relatives and Geisha girl friends. His widow attended the New York Metropolitan Performance.
All the action in the Covent Garden production takes place within the confines of the minimalist rented home with the no furniture apart from mats for sitting or sleeping, storage facility under the stage and the occasional use of a small table.
One could argue that this is the one Opera where 3D has nothing to offer although I thought the impact of the additional dimension is that that one has a greater sense of the dramatic and of being on stage rather than as a member of an audience. This is also true for the 3D Carmen production but where the action enables great camera and visual creativity.
It is important not to forget that is the story of an innocent 15 year old Geisha trained Japanese girl Cio Cio San and a mature Naval Officer who these days would be accurately described a paedophile sex tourist and whose conduct is far more reprehensible that of the innocent GI in Miss Saigon when the new bar girl is bought for him by his best friend.
Butterfly was played Patricia Racette in the New York Production, a bulky opera singer but who nevertheless acted with the innocence of an adolescent, a waiting lover and a young mother prepared to sacrifice herself for her child. Zhang Liping is now in in her early forties having played the role to great acclaim in her early thirties and like Racette has the remarkable ability to act with the mannerisms of a young girl, but nevertheless is aware she is far from the child bride to which Pinkerton is drawn.
There was an important difference in the performances of Marcello Giordino as Pinkerton and that now of James Valenti. Giordino is also a bulky opera star which made the relationship in the Met production somehow more plausible if one forgets the difference in ages. Valenti is strikingly tall and very much the educated and sophisticated naval officer. My only problem was the lack of a connection between him and Butterfly You did get the impression that he felt passion for his bride although he is convincing about his guilt and remorse later.
In the opening of the Opera Captain Pinkerton makes it plain that he considers this to be a fake marriage, an experience before he settles down with a wife family in the USA. The girl is sold to him by an unscrupulous marriage broker who is not different from the Bar owner in Miss Saigon, finding virgin in the countryside who will become his premium Miss Saigon bride for the endless stream of lecherous GI’s. Moreover Pinkerton is warned by the Consul that the girl is taking the relationship seriously especially when she is denounced by an elder and who insists she is cut off from all her relations. This makes Pinkerton a dislikeable man from the outset. He is in a rush to complete the formalities and aghast when the relatives arrive and cannot get rid of them quick enough. Although 15 his bride has been trained as a Geisha with appropriate social graces and a personal maid and companion Susuki and while the performance of Helen Schneiderman is world class it cannot compare with that of Maria Zajick, the extraordinary Mezzo Soprano whose signature role are those in Aida but also of Susuki.
The first Act comprises the arrival of Pinkerton at the rented House on a hill overlooking the Nagasaki Harbour; I have always felt there is great irony here with the two rapes of the population of this once fair city. Pinkerton is brought by the marriage broker played by Robin Leggate and the US Consul to ensure the proprieties are maintained and who is troubled by the proposed marriage because he understands the different cultural perspectives.
Unlike the majority of the girls who understand the impact of being a Geisha on the rest of their lives, Suzuki comes from a wealthy family of standing who have fallen on hard time, and waiting in the wings is a young Japanese warrior of good birth wanting to marry her. In this production he is played as an older business man seeking a young attractive mistress no different from Pinkerton.
In Miss Saigon the girl is also from a village whose family fall on hard times with the death of her father. She was promised by to a young Communist warrior who wants her as a proper bride and not as a concubine. They are to take different paths in Opera and Musical.
The American Consul, the marriage broker and Pinkerton are all aware that the wedding ceremony is a façade to enable him to enjoy the experience of the young woman while he is in port, and that whatever he says or promises he has no intention of returning or establishing a permanent relationship. He admits his love em and leave them, a girl in every port, approach, the Consul who warns, from his knowledge of the girl that she is likely to put all her trust in him and take the marriage seriously. Pinkerton notes that the contract can be terminated by him at any time without notice or penalty. It is important to appreciate the cultural and language divide between the two, and the role of the Geisha in Japanese society at that time. This is the tragedy of the opera story.
The situation in Saigon is very different and apart from the exotic location there are have always been bars and bar girls as well as brothels catering for the soldier as there are now for the sex tourist. The soldier here is just as inexperienced of life as his paid bride for the night and for him this one night becomes just an important as he is to her. This is the difference between an experience based on infatuation rather than lust. Pinkerton says all the right words but we know from the outset he does not mean them.
A major in ingredient to the first act is that Madam Butterfly as she has become is that in order to adapt and fit into her husband’s life she has gone to the local mission to become a Christian thus alienating herself for her uncle, the Bonze (Buddhist Monk) who is also one of her uncles and from her other relatives. It is this aspect of the relationship with horrifies her family and alienates her from them not the likely temporary nature of the relationship. It is the way of things just as street children have become the way of things in Indian cities.
Suzuki quickly becomes her confident, mother figure and ally. Cio Cio San has had some education and on being told that she is as beautiful as a butterfly by Pinkerton she responds from knowledge that some men in the West collect Butterflies destroy Butterflies to which Pinkerton explains that they do pin them so as to stop them flying away.
Minghella divided the second act into two parts, which the usual way the Opera is presented in order to achieve maximum dramatic effect. In the first part of the second act three years have passed and Butterfly has remained constant in love and expectation that what he said about returning was truthful and she spends time taking note of the arrivals in the port from her vantage point in the hillside. Suzuki is loyal but sceptical and tries to help her to be more realistic especially as their money begins to run out. The marriage broker brings the young warrior who wants to marry her despite the relationship she has had with the American. She sends them both away. In the Convent Garden production he brings the business man who makes it plain she is to be his concubine and she sends him away clinging to her belief in Pinkerton and that the USA and not Japan is her country.
It is in this middle part of story that the musical Miss Saigon significantly changes. The young man is besotted with the girl and with the help of his friend and with his savings goes to live with her effectively deserting marrying and with the intention that she will become his lifelong woman. It is only because of the impending fall of Saigon and the sudden departure of the Americans that their relationship ends. He has to take one of the last helicopters out of the city while she is among the hundreds left behind to their fate.
Before this the man with whom she was betrothed as a child arrives and is horrified to find out what has happened but his feelings for her remain and he warns both about their fate. The bar owner in Saigon is also on his way out to the closest place where he can continue to trade. Both young women are abandoned but for very different reasons and both wait. It is in Madam Butterfly that she sings one of the great and much loved Operatic Arias of all time One Fine day “Un Bel di”. There is a similar musical number in Miss Saigon although of very different quality but is nevertheless as haunting.
There is also the visit of Warrior in Miss Saigon. This is one of the colourful and subsequently moving moments in the stage show. He comes to take her full of the triumph of the Communist success in driving out the invaders from his country is then is horrified to find that she has a blue eyed son, her pride and her joy and her reason for surviving. He had come to take her and not the child. Her solution is to kill the man with the revolver given to her by her husband before he was forced to leave.
The same scene is played differently in Madam Butterfly with the Consul coming to say he has had a letter in which Pinkerton is explaining his intention not to return but she misinterprets every word which the Consul tries to explain to her and he cannot bear to tell her the truth. When she produces her son all he can do is to leave and report the position to Pinkerton. The child is blue eye and fair haired and adorable. He is destined to break many female hearts on stage, in film and in life in the future.
Pinkerton’s ship arrives and the two women prepare for his visit. Susuki who had her doubts and expresses concern over their rapidly diminishing funds and favoured the match with the businessman as a solution is caught up in the excitement and goes to collect flowers from thee garden to cover the inside of their home. She, Butterfly and child sit waiting expectant for hour upon hour and throughout the night. There is the famous humming chorus and her aria of belief and hope, with similar number in Miss Saigon
In the stage show the war has ended and the Bar owner has discovered the girl and her son and sees this as his ticket to the USA. It he is who alerts the friend of the husband who is visiting to help the children of G’I left behind with an important political song about their fate. It is he who in turn informs his married friend and who in turn admits the relationship to his wife of three years and to whom he has said nothing of his affair and local marriage. There is an important exchange between husband and wife in Miss Saigon that we would expect in the 20th century. It is the expectations of the bar owner which takes the musical into the number The American dream symbolised by a Cadillac is brought on stage.
Butterfly, exhausted goes to bed with her son and Pinkerton the Consul with Pinkerton’s wife waiting outside arrive early to talk to the maid and asking her to break the news to Butterfly and that he has come her son. Although devastated and heartbroken for her mistress Suzuki agrees. Pinkerton is consumed with guilt at what he has done and cannot cope with the reality of the situation and goes off leaving his wife and the Consul talking with Suzuki but before they can leave Butterfly arrives and immediately senses correctly what is going on. She agrees to hand over the child on condition that Pinkerton comes in person for him. As he approaches she commit suicide using the knife which her father used, “to die with honour.”
This is where the Opera when brilliantly sung and acted can devastate an audience no matter how many times they have seen the show and know the story. In its own way Miss Saigon also has a similar impact because the audience has been caught up with the beautiful music and glittering sets and there is horror and universal guilt at the death of the young woman sacrificing herself so that her child will be taken to the USA and have the kind of life she once dreamed for herself.
In many respects it was not the kind of experience for a celebration weekend and affected me as I emerged into the evening sunshine. It was spring but I saw the winter of my life.
It was a glorious sunny and warm day as I set off to go through the Tyne tunnel and indeed not a day for the inside of anywhere. I set off down the hill and was astonished to find that Ocean Road, the main thoroughfare between the town centre, passing the row of over a bed and breakfast hotels on one side and a similar number and more of restaurants on the other was blocked off.
On Monday morning because of a forecast of another good weather day I walked down and alongside the park before turning into ocean Road from the park end I discovered the cause of the blocking. The former public house and over recent year’s nightclub bar has almost been demolished. The closure of the building was no surprise as a number of other similar establishments have also been closed with one presently being turned into offices although even this work appears to have come to a halt. The demolition of the building is a surprise.
As I rounded the corner on my way to the Health centre for a blood test I was not surprised to see the John Wright centre boarded up. It was one of the first multi use centres for those with disabilities and in my time a chapel and a bar lounge had been added although its use was reduced with the creation of a modern work centre for those with a learning disability and the of visual disability creating their own centre. Given that in my time a purpose built centre embracing people with disabilities and the able bodied had been created in Jarrow and then in the late 1980’s a state of the art centre for multi disability use and for the elders was purpose built in Hebburn the financial justification for the three centres disappeared long ago if it ever existed. That they did reflect the finest aspect of a people based local democracy.
The exploration of what was going on meant I arrived later than intended at the Health centre and found 12 others before me although by the time the second block of ten people were called into the waiting area for the tests the 29th individual had been reached. However even with only two chairs the process was speedy and I was out within half an hour of arriving with time to head for a bacon roll and coffee at the Wetherspoons’ and an excellent coffee it was and then some shopping at the supermarket.
On Sunday I used my new Tyne Tunnel electronic payment disk for the first time. This is a solid plastic disk which fits to the windscreen with a sucker and which registers at the any of the barriers as having paid £1.24 instead of the cash charge of £1.40. One adds amounts in minimum of £15 which provides 6 return journeys about my average need for a year giving and overall saving of only £2 but more significant if not having to find the small change and a faster passage especially now that queuing has been eliminated with the opening of both tunnels. The tag costs £11.40 to provide and is made in China, where else?
I have re-examined my previous reporting on Madam Butterfly where I first saw a relay also on a birthday three years ago. That was a live relay from the Metropolitan New York and then I watched again on Internet connected TV. The 3D version is a filmed event specially constructed to give the impression of a performance before a live audience but where the need for close ups and on stage movement makes filming with the special cameras impossible with an audience although the audience reaction is added at the end.
There is only a limited build up this time and at one level nothing of the audience excitement before the raising of the curtain. Similarly there were no intervals with only a brief pause between the three acts so the performance lasts two hours instead of the usual two and three quarters although traditionally the opera is performed with only one interval. However this had the impact of increasing the emotional tension and sense of dooms despite everyone being familiar with the story as few in the well filled cinema theatre were under fifty. For some reason there was no lighting which made locating seats a problem as a consequence.
The two productions are significantly different with the Minghella production creating a vivid visual presentation which included the use of puppets and dancers as well as a fair size chorus of wedding guests of relatives and Geisha girl friends. His widow attended the New York Metropolitan Performance.
All the action in the Covent Garden production takes place within the confines of the minimalist rented home with the no furniture apart from mats for sitting or sleeping, storage facility under the stage and the occasional use of a small table.
One could argue that this is the one Opera where 3D has nothing to offer although I thought the impact of the additional dimension is that that one has a greater sense of the dramatic and of being on stage rather than as a member of an audience. This is also true for the 3D Carmen production but where the action enables great camera and visual creativity.
It is important not to forget that is the story of an innocent 15 year old Geisha trained Japanese girl Cio Cio San and a mature Naval Officer who these days would be accurately described a paedophile sex tourist and whose conduct is far more reprehensible that of the innocent GI in Miss Saigon when the new bar girl is bought for him by his best friend.
Butterfly was played Patricia Racette in the New York Production, a bulky opera singer but who nevertheless acted with the innocence of an adolescent, a waiting lover and a young mother prepared to sacrifice herself for her child. Zhang Liping is now in in her early forties having played the role to great acclaim in her early thirties and like Racette has the remarkable ability to act with the mannerisms of a young girl, but nevertheless is aware she is far from the child bride to which Pinkerton is drawn.
There was an important difference in the performances of Marcello Giordino as Pinkerton and that now of James Valenti. Giordino is also a bulky opera star which made the relationship in the Met production somehow more plausible if one forgets the difference in ages. Valenti is strikingly tall and very much the educated and sophisticated naval officer. My only problem was the lack of a connection between him and Butterfly You did get the impression that he felt passion for his bride although he is convincing about his guilt and remorse later.
In the opening of the Opera Captain Pinkerton makes it plain that he considers this to be a fake marriage, an experience before he settles down with a wife family in the USA. The girl is sold to him by an unscrupulous marriage broker who is not different from the Bar owner in Miss Saigon, finding virgin in the countryside who will become his premium Miss Saigon bride for the endless stream of lecherous GI’s. Moreover Pinkerton is warned by the Consul that the girl is taking the relationship seriously especially when she is denounced by an elder and who insists she is cut off from all her relations. This makes Pinkerton a dislikeable man from the outset. He is in a rush to complete the formalities and aghast when the relatives arrive and cannot get rid of them quick enough. Although 15 his bride has been trained as a Geisha with appropriate social graces and a personal maid and companion Susuki and while the performance of Helen Schneiderman is world class it cannot compare with that of Maria Zajick, the extraordinary Mezzo Soprano whose signature role are those in Aida but also of Susuki.
The first Act comprises the arrival of Pinkerton at the rented House on a hill overlooking the Nagasaki Harbour; I have always felt there is great irony here with the two rapes of the population of this once fair city. Pinkerton is brought by the marriage broker played by Robin Leggate and the US Consul to ensure the proprieties are maintained and who is troubled by the proposed marriage because he understands the different cultural perspectives.
Unlike the majority of the girls who understand the impact of being a Geisha on the rest of their lives, Suzuki comes from a wealthy family of standing who have fallen on hard time, and waiting in the wings is a young Japanese warrior of good birth wanting to marry her. In this production he is played as an older business man seeking a young attractive mistress no different from Pinkerton.
In Miss Saigon the girl is also from a village whose family fall on hard times with the death of her father. She was promised by to a young Communist warrior who wants her as a proper bride and not as a concubine. They are to take different paths in Opera and Musical.
The American Consul, the marriage broker and Pinkerton are all aware that the wedding ceremony is a façade to enable him to enjoy the experience of the young woman while he is in port, and that whatever he says or promises he has no intention of returning or establishing a permanent relationship. He admits his love em and leave them, a girl in every port, approach, the Consul who warns, from his knowledge of the girl that she is likely to put all her trust in him and take the marriage seriously. Pinkerton notes that the contract can be terminated by him at any time without notice or penalty. It is important to appreciate the cultural and language divide between the two, and the role of the Geisha in Japanese society at that time. This is the tragedy of the opera story.
The situation in Saigon is very different and apart from the exotic location there are have always been bars and bar girls as well as brothels catering for the soldier as there are now for the sex tourist. The soldier here is just as inexperienced of life as his paid bride for the night and for him this one night becomes just an important as he is to her. This is the difference between an experience based on infatuation rather than lust. Pinkerton says all the right words but we know from the outset he does not mean them.
A major in ingredient to the first act is that Madam Butterfly as she has become is that in order to adapt and fit into her husband’s life she has gone to the local mission to become a Christian thus alienating herself for her uncle, the Bonze (Buddhist Monk) who is also one of her uncles and from her other relatives. It is this aspect of the relationship with horrifies her family and alienates her from them not the likely temporary nature of the relationship. It is the way of things just as street children have become the way of things in Indian cities.
Suzuki quickly becomes her confident, mother figure and ally. Cio Cio San has had some education and on being told that she is as beautiful as a butterfly by Pinkerton she responds from knowledge that some men in the West collect Butterflies destroy Butterflies to which Pinkerton explains that they do pin them so as to stop them flying away.
Minghella divided the second act into two parts, which the usual way the Opera is presented in order to achieve maximum dramatic effect. In the first part of the second act three years have passed and Butterfly has remained constant in love and expectation that what he said about returning was truthful and she spends time taking note of the arrivals in the port from her vantage point in the hillside. Suzuki is loyal but sceptical and tries to help her to be more realistic especially as their money begins to run out. The marriage broker brings the young warrior who wants to marry her despite the relationship she has had with the American. She sends them both away. In the Convent Garden production he brings the business man who makes it plain she is to be his concubine and she sends him away clinging to her belief in Pinkerton and that the USA and not Japan is her country.
It is in this middle part of story that the musical Miss Saigon significantly changes. The young man is besotted with the girl and with the help of his friend and with his savings goes to live with her effectively deserting marrying and with the intention that she will become his lifelong woman. It is only because of the impending fall of Saigon and the sudden departure of the Americans that their relationship ends. He has to take one of the last helicopters out of the city while she is among the hundreds left behind to their fate.
Before this the man with whom she was betrothed as a child arrives and is horrified to find out what has happened but his feelings for her remain and he warns both about their fate. The bar owner in Saigon is also on his way out to the closest place where he can continue to trade. Both young women are abandoned but for very different reasons and both wait. It is in Madam Butterfly that she sings one of the great and much loved Operatic Arias of all time One Fine day “Un Bel di”. There is a similar musical number in Miss Saigon although of very different quality but is nevertheless as haunting.
There is also the visit of Warrior in Miss Saigon. This is one of the colourful and subsequently moving moments in the stage show. He comes to take her full of the triumph of the Communist success in driving out the invaders from his country is then is horrified to find that she has a blue eyed son, her pride and her joy and her reason for surviving. He had come to take her and not the child. Her solution is to kill the man with the revolver given to her by her husband before he was forced to leave.
The same scene is played differently in Madam Butterfly with the Consul coming to say he has had a letter in which Pinkerton is explaining his intention not to return but she misinterprets every word which the Consul tries to explain to her and he cannot bear to tell her the truth. When she produces her son all he can do is to leave and report the position to Pinkerton. The child is blue eye and fair haired and adorable. He is destined to break many female hearts on stage, in film and in life in the future.
Pinkerton’s ship arrives and the two women prepare for his visit. Susuki who had her doubts and expresses concern over their rapidly diminishing funds and favoured the match with the businessman as a solution is caught up in the excitement and goes to collect flowers from thee garden to cover the inside of their home. She, Butterfly and child sit waiting expectant for hour upon hour and throughout the night. There is the famous humming chorus and her aria of belief and hope, with similar number in Miss Saigon
In the stage show the war has ended and the Bar owner has discovered the girl and her son and sees this as his ticket to the USA. It he is who alerts the friend of the husband who is visiting to help the children of G’I left behind with an important political song about their fate. It is he who in turn informs his married friend and who in turn admits the relationship to his wife of three years and to whom he has said nothing of his affair and local marriage. There is an important exchange between husband and wife in Miss Saigon that we would expect in the 20th century. It is the expectations of the bar owner which takes the musical into the number The American dream symbolised by a Cadillac is brought on stage.
Butterfly, exhausted goes to bed with her son and Pinkerton the Consul with Pinkerton’s wife waiting outside arrive early to talk to the maid and asking her to break the news to Butterfly and that he has come her son. Although devastated and heartbroken for her mistress Suzuki agrees. Pinkerton is consumed with guilt at what he has done and cannot cope with the reality of the situation and goes off leaving his wife and the Consul talking with Suzuki but before they can leave Butterfly arrives and immediately senses correctly what is going on. She agrees to hand over the child on condition that Pinkerton comes in person for him. As he approaches she commit suicide using the knife which her father used, “to die with honour.”
This is where the Opera when brilliantly sung and acted can devastate an audience no matter how many times they have seen the show and know the story. In its own way Miss Saigon also has a similar impact because the audience has been caught up with the beautiful music and glittering sets and there is horror and universal guilt at the death of the young woman sacrificing herself so that her child will be taken to the USA and have the kind of life she once dreamed for herself.
In many respects it was not the kind of experience for a celebration weekend and affected me as I emerged into the evening sunshine. It was spring but I saw the winter of my life.
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