Tom Service [The Guardian, 7 November 2005]
Anyone expecting images of cinematic brilliance from Anthony Minghella’s new production of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly for English National Opera will not be disappointed. He stages the end of the first act, the love duet between Mary Plazas’s frail Butterfly and Gwyn Hughes Jones’s passionate Pinkerton, as an elaborate ballet with Japanese lanterns and an entire orchard of pink cherry blossom. It’s an image worthy of the hype that has surrounded Minghella’s debut as an opera director.