Madam Butterfly at the E.N.O.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a music history class in college, and the teacher was talking about Puccini, and in particular, Madam Butterfly. He briefly told us the story, and then showed us a clip from a film of the opera: when it's three years since Pinkerton left, and Cho Cho San is chastising her maid for not having faith that he will return. And so, she sings Un bel di vedremo - 'One fine day we shall see'. It was so moving: even just seeing that moment from the middle of the film - it really affected me. And since then, whenever I even just think of the story, I get all choked up!

So at last I went to see it last week. It must sound strange, but I was almost dreading it - I don't know how I imagined I might react, but I thought that it might be somehow unbearably moving to see it in the flesh. In fact, I think it could have been, but as the tragic ending approached, I'm afraid I couldn't help detaching myself from it a little; it just would have been too much.

This E.N.O. production is really beautiful. The opening is particularly striking: there is compete silence as Cho Cho San emerges at the back of the sloping stage and floats gracefully towards us. Cho Cho San's child is realised using bunraku, which is a style of Japanese puppet theatre. Although the puppeteers are completely visible, they achieve such a level of expression that it's very easy to forget them and just to regard the puppet as a character in the same world as the characters played by the human performers.

That's only the second opera I've ever been to - the first one was so long ago that I'm ashamed to admit that I can't even remember what it was! I think that what put me off for a long time was that it seemed like you had to know the story very well before you went, because it's quite hard to pick up every word sung - even when it's sung in English. But these days there are surtitles (at least, at the E.N.O. there were) so this really shouldn't put anyone off anymore.