A sheet of paper lies in Lake Constance, it is a bit crumpled and has folds, it rises towards the sky, is 1340 square meters in size, weighs 300 tons and yet seems as light as a feather. Drawings of mountains and trees can be seen on the paper, with characters at the top left. Michael Levine has very nicely built his fantasy of a huge enlargement of a Japanese ink drawing in the lake. That’s as impressive as it has to be here, because the 7,000 spectators per performance want to be thrilled and overwhelmed. But no matter how seductively Franck Evin’s light transforms this stage landscape and makes it vivid, no matter how effectively Luke Halls’ video lets the spirits of the ancestors rise threateningly in this landscape – art has little chance against nature. The first “Wow” elicits an imposing flash over Lake Constance from the audience.
the Bregenz Festival open this year with Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” as a game on the lake, free of any corona restrictions, 250,000 spectators are expected in total, 200,000 alone for the already sold-out “Butterfly”. In fact, the premiere is initially the return of a major cultural festival, the atmosphere is upbeat, even the weather is initially playing along. The sheet lightning over the lake intensifies the drama of the action, lightning strikes, but initially only a light shower over the venue. This leads to a big rustling of the different rainskins, which lets go of a scene of Goro, the matchmaker. Which isn’t too bad, because Goro is usually an annoying character, here too, a traditionally Japanese-robed clown in the form of Taylan Reinhard.
Director Andrew Homoki, director of the Zurich Opera, has an idea. This consists in Pinkerton, the American officer, stumbling into a world that he doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand. He’s only interested in his own amusement, which is marriage to a 15-year-old girl named Cio-Cio-San, marriage being just a label for a semi-legitimate affair. This Pinkerton acts in such a way that he rips a few holes in the stage design, i.e. in the old Japanese drawing, the value of which he doesn’t care at all. He stands with his legs apart in the filigree pictures, chants praises for America, a flagpole grows out of one of the holes like the erection of an ignorant conqueror, the US flag flutters like the rainskins on the heads of the viewers.
The great aria of Cio-Cio-San, the aria of hope for the return of the supposed husband, is touchingly beautiful
It’s just stupid that this Pinkerton has nothing impressive about his tenor, that he Edgaras Montvidas laboriously plowing through the by no means excessive demands of his game. At his side, as a human corrective, is the Consul of Brian Mulligan, a wonderful singer. And all around there is Japan as Homoki imagines it: a polonaise of geishas, a ghostly masked choir of extras (costumes: Antony McDonald). Butterfly tripped in small steps, as did her confidante Suzuki. This is only tolerable if one assumes that Homoki wants to exhibit Pinkerton’s view of a culture that is foreign to him. If you took it as the director’s attitude, you would be extremely surprised.
But it sounds good. The Wiener Symphoniker under Enrique Mazzola play wonderfully smooth, the sound system gives its best, you are in a huge concert hall without a roof. and Barno Ismatullaeva, the white-painted Butterfly, has a lyrical magic. The great aria of Cio-Cio-San, the aria of hope and longing for the return of the supposed husband, is touchingly beautiful. And just in time. Because then a rain front approaches, the performance is stopped, only 1,700 of the 7,000 spectators move inside the Festspielhaus to experience the continuation as a concert opera for an hour.
Not that Homoki’s production was much more before, but now one has the impression of attending an orchestra rehearsal. The grand gestures of the soloists, which are necessary on the lake stage, become a kind of silent film grotesque, musically another judgment is out of the question, because everything has been rehearsed for the game on the lake. And it worked out there.