PUCCINI - A LIFE IN 7 WOMEN / Lirica Arts / Review

 

PUCCINI – A LIFE IN 7 WOMEN 

Lirica Arts 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Friday (2 August 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 August 2024 with the title "Japanese soprano Mako Nishimoto sings with power in Lirica Arts' Puccini tribute".

Commemorating the centenary of his death, local chamber opera company Lirica Arts presented a tribute to Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini by performing highlights from eight operas spanning the years 1883 to 1924. Curated and presented by Shridar Mani, much research and detailed history was crammed into 100 illuminating minutes of music and oration. 

Puccini was deeply in love with the female voice. The roles of Cio-Cio San, Tosca, Mimi, Turandot and Liu come to mind, but the seven women in the title also included Puccini’s ambitious mother Albina and his mistress-turned-wife Elvira. All of them shaped his musical life and helped seal his reputation as Western classical opera’s most popular and perhaps greatest-ever composer. 

Given its subject, sopranos dominated the concert accompanied by splendid collaborative pianist Beatrice Lin. Korean soprano Renata Hann opened the concert with Anna’s aria Non ti scordar di me from Puccini’s first opera Le Villi (The Fairies), revealing a sweetness of tone and excellent vocal control. 

As each opera was presented chronologically, Manon Lescaut was next. Japanese soprano Mako Nishimoto, who stole the show in Singapore Lyric Opera’s 2013 production of Madama Butterfly, displayed a healthy ringing vibrato in In quelle trine morbide. Opposite her, Des Grieux’s aria Donna non vidi mai sung by tenor Shaun Lee was put to a strain at its highest notes. 

The excerpts from La Boheme came from the Third Act. Donde lieta usci was Mimi’s touching aria of separation from her lover Rodolfo, with Nishimoto at her most sympathetic. Following that was the evening’s only quartet, Addio dolce svegliare alla mattina, with the opera’s two couples (Mimi and Rodolfo, Musetta and Marcello) breaking up, but for different reasons and to tragicomic effect. 

The concert’s other male singer was baritone Martin Ng, founder-director of Lirica Arts. His imperious role in the Te Deum as villainous police chief Baron Scarpia in Tosca was convincing for its gravity and grim determination. The opera’s finest aria, Vissi d’arte, belonged to Nishimoto’s Tosca, whose powerful performance will be remembered by many present. 

And who was not waiting for her Madama Butterfly? She did not sing the familiar Un bel di vedremo but rather the opera’s heart-wrenching final minutes in Tu tu piccolo iddio, where Cio-Cio San’s act of seppuku becomes inevitable. 

Two relative rarities came in Ch’il bel sogno di doretta from La Rondine (The Sparrow) and Senza Mamma from Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica), both brilliantly helmed by Hann. Dramatic soprano roles should not overshadow those of a lyric soprano’s, and this concert succeeded by highlighting this aspect. 

Turandot was Puccini’s final opera, left uncompleted at the time of his premature demise. The vast contrasts between blood-thirsty Turandot and self-sacrificing Liu were laid bare by Nishimoto and Hann in an astonishing sequence that included In questa reggia (Turandot), Tanto amore segreto and Tu che di gel sei cinta (Liu) before closing with Liu’s Funeral. And that was where Puccini finally laid down his pen.

PUCCINI'S MADAMA BUTTERFLY / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

PUCCINI’S MADAMA BUTTERFLY

Singapore Lyric Opera

Esplanade Theatre

Friday (1 February 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 February 2013 with the title "Butterfly soars to new heights".

The Singapore Lyric Opera was on course to have staged four consecutive operas new to its repertoire for the first time, but it turned its back on the double bill of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, and settled on the familiar favourite Madama Butterfly instead. It was a stroke of pragmatism and expediency, which transformed looming box-office disaster to full houses.

This was its third production of the best-loved tear-jerker, and the first without veteran soprano Nancy Yuen in the titular role. She had been spotted in the audience looking very relaxed, as her younger Japanese colleague Mako Nishimoto stole the show. It would seem that the part of Cio-Cio-San was tailor-made for her, the tragic Oriental who gave only love but reaped misfortune.

Nishimoto sang as she lived her character, fraught with tenderness, passion, anxieties and terminal despair. Her voice was sweetness itself, but was capable of tumultuous shifts as her mood traversed many shades of darkness. In the Second Act, her aria Un bel di (One Fine Day) was pure radiance captured in a bottle, and when girlish anticipation turned into the cold realisation of her partner’s treachery, these were etched on her face and ultimately her singing.

Butterfly’s tragedy was born from a clash of cultures and expectations. This was mirrored in Spanish tenor Israel Lozano’s Pinkerton, whose oblivious and callous posture was apparent from the outset. She was, after all, a plaything even if the shared chemistry in the First Act love duet seemed like the real thing. The fact that Lozano garnered not a few boos at the end was testament to his believability.

       

The supporting cast was excellent in all respects. Anna Koor (the brow-beaten Suzuki), John Antoniou (the sympathetic Consul Sharpless) and Lemuel dela Cruz (the slimy marriage broker Goro) added to the characterisation and interest of the story. The chorus scenes were lively and colourful, with director Andrew Sinclair’s attention to the minutiae of details being particularly delightful.

Did anyone notice Butterfly’s cousin (a bit part sung by young soprano Su Yiwen) and how jealous she got at the wedding ceremony? Even more significant is the non-singing role played by Andrei Rasmussen, as Butterfly’s son Sorrow (above), who acted most naturally and responded to her every gesture as an innocent and loving 3-year-old would.

The set design by Christopher Chua was kept deliberately simple, with sliding doors playing a pivotal part in separating public scenes from what is kept private. Deborah Png’s concept of lighting was stunning in its effectiveness; fiery red for the Bonze’s menacing intrusion (above) and the phases of a full moon for the musical entr’acte into the final scene.

This was one production where the SLO Orchestra conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan sounded close to faultless. When the orchestral playing complements the singing to the point that it becomes a seamless part of the action by not bringing undue attention to itself, it has done its job well. This may well be SLO’s finest production yet.

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly plays for two more shows, on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Be sure to catch it.

Photographs courtesy of Singapore Lyric Opera.