That’s Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Kelley Rourke and Eric Einhorn’s Cosi, not to be confused with Cosi fan tutte (though Cosi was set to Mozart’s slaughtered Cosi fan tutte score).
The good news is that it was a fine Butterfly, a revival of Francesca Zambello’s 2014 production, with settings by Michael Yeargan, a frequent Zambello collaborator. Mme. Zambello places Puccini’s masterwork not in the usual Japanese house or in David Belasco’s dusty Nagasaki hills but in a turn-of-the-century U.S. Consulate, sometimes inhabited by women with children clamoring for visas.
The whisky bottle is pulled from the desk of the presiding consul, Sharpless, where Pinkerton’s wedding to Butterfly will be formalized. Butterfly appears, accompanied only by her mother and servants. The beautiful chorus, “Ah! Ah! quanto cielo,” normally sung by a bevy of geishas was sung by like-white-dressed American women, evidently wives of consular officials.
Strangely, Butterfly announced her age as eighteen (diciotto) rather than the “quindici anni” (15) of the libretto, prompting the thought that maybe such change was made to assuage Jeffrey Epstein qualms — the legal age for sexual consent in New York is 17 years, but in Italian seventeen is the four syllable word diciasette.
Or why?
The Nagasaki consulate magically transformed itself into a blank, sloped stage bathed in the appropriate colors for the wedding night, the vigil and the death.
Though a huge projected black and white photo of three early 20th century, gray battleships appeared towards the conclusion of the vigil.
Of particular note was the beautifully paced second act, which as well took place at the consulate, Butterfly’s “Un bel di” was perfectly integrated into the dramatic flow of the act, beginning with this imagining of Pinkerton’s return. The child was then revealed, becoming an actual, huge player in the drama. Sharpless shattered Butterfly’s beautiful illusion, though her illusion is sustained through the leaden, rose pedal laden tragic irony of the vigil.
Butterfly was sung by 48 year-old, Japanese soprano Eri Nakamura who does not hide her vocal maturity. She eschews the sweetness of the usual Butterfly to find the weight of character of a tragic heroine, finding the dignity of a Dido and the passion of a Tosca. From the outset Mme. Nakamura’s Butterfly was aware of her sacrifice to Pinkerton — the renunciation of her world and everything she had ever known. The usual magical, mutual seduction at the end of Act I was instead Butterfly’s torment at leaving her known world — at least it read that way. It was not a tender scene.
In Act II the Nakamura Butterfly became the spinto soprano pitting her abandoned situation with the maternal love for her child, respect for his provenance and excitement for his future life in a world yet to be known. There is also the obvious reality, silently known to us by the omniscient presence of her servant Suzuki. Butterfly’s Act III death was not resigned sacrifice, as dictated by Japanese custom, it was the torment of a mother leaving her child, the “Tu, tu, tu” was stridently sung, a mother making this ultimate sacrifice. A huge, blood-red cloth fell from the fly loft.
Pinkerton rushed on to throw himself on Butterfly’s body, not to be outdone, the child Trouble then rushed in, to throw himself onto the pile. It was a maudlin finish to a very moving and thoughtful production.
The effect of the Butterfly death was further marred by the all too obvious, musically rhetorical hesitations imposed by conductor Joseph Colaneri during the death throes of the heroine. The maestro otherwise offered an effective, supportive, and idiomatic reading of the Puccini score.
Central to the casting of the Zambello Butterfly was the role of the child Trouble aka Sorrow. It was perfectly cast, performed by a child named Prior Parker who, in a non-singing role, had no program bio. He was of an approximately appropriate age and size, with proper coloration — light brown hair. Trouble, a central character in this Butterfly production, had considerable stage business which he accomplished with confident panache.
This revival of the Zambello Butterfly was staged by Joshua R. Horowitz, an Assistant/Associate Director at the Washington and Houston operas, among others.
Suzuki was sung by Filipino soprano Michele Mariposa, soon to perform Suzuki at the Washington National Opera. In the harsh acoustic of the 900-seat Alice Busch Opera Theater (1987) she managed to project a voice of beauty and power. She unleashed her feelings in Butterfly’s third act, evincing outrage far more than sorrow.
Pinkerton was sung by tenor Eric Taylor who possesses a large voice with a golden ring to it. He offered a pleasurable, and indeed passionate performance. Baritone Troy Cook as Sharpless made his character quite effective — that of a well sung, colorless bureaucrat whose wife or secretary was often at his side.
Gore was sung by Randy Ho, always played as an unwelcome presence. — Gore was present in the tableau of on-stage characters overseeing Butterfly’s death. Yamadori, as played by Korean bass Joseph Park, was a real alternative, if an unsure alternative Japanese husband to Butterfly. Bass baritone Woos Ham sang the Bonze. These three character roles were sung by members of the Glimmerglass Festival’s young artist program.
There were a large number of Asian named supernumeraries, as well as several women who were Caucasian employees at the U.S. Consulate.
Così
How do you transform Mozart’s Così fan tutte into an event that might entertain the Glimmerglass Opera’s octogenarian audience? Well, first and foremost you must shorten its usual 3 1/2 plus hour duration to absolutely no more than 3 hours, and you must recast the libretto into a contemporary American English lingo that might be that of obviously not-too-bright, dizzy which-is-to-say mindless college-age kids.
It was a frantic, frenetic dorm party that could have only been drug induced.
The result was something the Glimmerglass Festival evidently knew that they could not title Cosi fan tutte, though the Festival had no qualms attributing its score to Mozart, even having the audacity to mention its libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. It will have been a Herculean task to recast the syllables to match Mozart’s rhythms, even though the syllabic sounds might be and were very different from the Mozart’s elegant, neo-classical sounds.
Given that the alternative title of Così fan tutte is La scuola degli amanti (the school for lovers) the creators of Cosi (the single word translates as “like that?” or “and so,” or “so?”) set the action in a college dorm, specifically a common area below and above it was a bedroom for Fiordiligi and Dorabella, and a communal bathroom — “Per pieta, ben mio, perdona” was delivered in a toilet stall, though other toilet humor was not in short supply.
Ferrando’s disguise was as a muscle-bound, body builder and Guglielmo became a joker clown with a bulb nose. Don Alfonso was the dorm’s janitor, I’m not sure who and what Despina was, and, as it happened, she was not privy to Don Alfonso’s joke.
The creators of Cosi were stage director Eric Einhorn, the founding stage director of New York City’s defunct On-Site Opera that evidently offered such “mash-ups.” Creator of the libretto was Kelley Rourke who has provided libretto’s for many new, American operas. For the upcoming Glimmerglass performances of Kurt Weill’s Happy End, Ms. Rourke created the concert version of Michael Feingold’s American version of this famed Brecht/Weill follow-up to Three Penny Opera.
The cast of Cosi included the Dorabella of Michelle Mariposa, the excellent Suzuki of the night before. Fiordiligi was sung by Amanda Batista, a far more successful comedienne than Mozart heroine. Baritone Kevin Burdette, the Festival’s esteemed artist-in-residence, was over-parted as Don Alfonso. Ferrando was sung by Travon D. Walker, Gughielmo was Gregory Feldmann, both fine singers and actors. Despina was embodied by Keely Futterer, soon to be the Fiordiligi at Tulsa Opera according to the program bios.
The conductor was Joseph Colaneri, who also gave the pre-curtain talk to a few hundred people. When he asked who had never before attended a Cosi fan tutte, at lease one third of those present raised their hands. Così?
Set design was by James Rotondo, costumes by Beth Goldenberg.
Michael Milenski
Alice Busch Opera Theater, Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown, NY. July 19 (Butterfly) and 20 (Così), 2026
All photos courtesy of the Glimmerglass Festival.