New Zealand Opera’s production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly opened in Auckland on Thursday and played to an almost full house at the newly refurbished ASB Theatre in the Aotea Centre.
You probably know the story – the philandering Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, US Navy, finding himself in Nagasaki, takes a wife, the completely naive and trusting Butterfly. Ignoring the warnings of the local US consul, he settles down to very temporary conjugal bliss and then leaves, seemingly never to return. Butterfly, disowned by her family, remains convinced that he will return one fine day. Pinkerton does return after three years but with his American wife. What he doesn’t know is that Butterfy bore him a son. He can’t bring himself to see her again and in the shame of it,
