this sunday I saw director Calixto Bieito's Madame Butterfly at the komische oper in Berlin.
Sensational!
Butterfly will never be the same.
Big art producer's like Gerard Mortier made it bonton not to present Puccini in the 90's. For years this "composer of the people"was considered somewhat vulgair and populistic.
Calixto bieito's remarkable production makes the embarresment of the one's with 'good taste' productive and proofes that in the populair there is to be found in these times a whole lot of meaning.
Take a trip to Asia and you will see, that in a way every kind of luxury seems made available to the poorest of this world. In houses made of bamboo one can find the children gathered around a cheap version of a flatscreen television and the women in their plastic chairs sharing the content of their plastic beauty cases. This is the confronting reductionist view a lot of people in the third world have of the western community. A place of financial security and material wealth. The promised land.
What better place to confront us with this fact than the civilizing machine called the operahouse.
The populair reductionist view of Asia through the eyes of an Italian seems somehow perfect to tell a present story about the economics of love.
This Butterfly is set in an Asian holiday resort that refers to the places described in recent books by Michel Hellebeque. Pinkerton and the other Americans are portrayed als sex tourist in present day Asia. Designs refer both to the plastic mimicing of richness in Asia and the images that is shown in American films about Asia. The lightning makes me think of the sunlight shining through rainforest leaves in a lot of vietnam films.
In the first twenty minutes of the piece I seem to die of shame. What a kitsch. It it all seems too much. Lightning (a lot of neon light) scenery (bad taste) and a view of asian people that is too cliche. More and more this production gains meaning when it turns out that this view of the Asian people is played out in game called: the economics of love.
The chewinggum music of puccini works great in this context. A lot of coca cola, mickey mouse and other pop art/culture references that look surprisingly fresh. Mainly because the thinking proces behind this production is so strong. The cliches are well used. We can often hear puccini in commercials not only because of it's easy listening factor but also because the music seems to be written with an open heart and true longing. This butterfly is not only plastic, musicly and on the level of the motivations of the characters, the longing is true and heartfelt.
In key moments and arias Bieito comes up with smart solutions (no cliches there) that both change our perspective of the scene and gives us not only clues about the story but also gives us confronting view on ourselves, on how we try to get on in life and how we deal with other people on a micro and on a macro level in our ratrace.
In the second act he has some brilliant tricks to get us, the audience to look beyond the story of Cho cho san en Pinkerton. He shows us (while respecting the music) with some extremely radical changes in the actions performed by Cho cho san how empty a world solely defined by numbers, economics and personal gain can get, no matter how honest and pure the longing can be.
Calixto Bieito radical interpretation opens up a new field of meaning in this classic popular opera.
This so called 'easy hit' becomes a confronting and haunting tale about how unfair power, wealth and freedom of movement is distributed in our world.
In the popular is the longing, the sellable, the mass, the great escapist sweet but also the unjust sour.
