Chicago Classical Review

Mon Mar 16, 2026 at 1:27 pm

Povero Butterfly. Povero Puccini.

Trying to get a firm handle on Lyric Opera’s new production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, which opened Saturday night, would give anyone a severe case of  whiplash—enough to rival Faye Dunaway in Chinatown (“She’s my sister! My daughter! My sister! My daughter!”).

For extended stretches, this Matthew Ozawa production—which debuted at Utah Opera last year— followed a fairly straightforward path. Writing at intermission, I was blocking out a largely positive review. Yet after the curtain went up for Act II, the revisionist production proceeded to go completely off the rails.

The motivation for this staging, says Ozawa in his personal director’s note, is, essentially, to rescue Puccini’s celebrated opera from white men. When experiencing Butterfly, Ozawa says, we must all “consider through whose lens we are viewing this opera.”

The director goes on to talk about about how his being biracial (Ozawa’s father was Japanese) has affected his life and career. “I am often one of the only artists of color in the spaces where I work. . . . Like Butterfly I have yearned for acceptance but never felt truly at home in any single culture or place.”

Ozawa claims his “boldly relevant” production “rescues the opera’s narrative” by employing “an entirely female [and] Japanese design collective,” which solves the problem of the story being seen “through the lens of a white man, Pinkerton.” Finally Ozawa professes his love for Puccini’s opera yet modestly states that the opera has “made me, as an Asian American, feel ostracized, and I have felt a duty to reclaim its narrative.”

It takes a certain brand of jaw-dropping hubris and solipsism to cast oneself in the role of the courageous hero who will “rescue” an operatic masterpiece from itself. How did millions of audience members ever enjoy Puccini’s opera before Matthew Ozawa came along?

I hate to break it to the director, but It’s not about you!! Nobody buys a ticket to see Butterfly because the stage director is half-Japanese or to see him work out his personal identity issues onstage. And no one in the audience cares about your background, biography, where you grew up, or why an opera makes you feel sad and neglected.

Ozawa, not insignificantly, is employed in a top administrative job at Lyric as “chief artistic officer,” a position created especially for him in 2022 by the company’s unlamented former CEO Anthony Freud. Which may help explain some of the bewildering casting and production decisions of recent years.

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Ozawa’s modern-dress staging makes Pinkerton into a contemporary hoodie-wearing loser living in a crummy apartment. In a silent pantomime, he takes a beer out of the refrigerator and, bored, amuses himself by retreating into his virtual-realty headset, where he can act out his fantasies as a Navy lieutenant in Nagasaki. (Who knew that was a popular avatar with 21st-century gamers?)  As Suzuki emerges from his refrigerator, the apartment splits into two halves, retreating to the sides of the stage, and the Japanese house comes forward, where the rest of Act I plays out, more or less traditionally.

One could have lived with the bizarro framing device but Ozawa doesn’t know when to leave bad enough alone. Act 2 opens with another silent pantomime in which Pinkerton is arguing with his wife. Angry, he retreats into his headset again to return to his Nagasaki romantic adventure. 

You ain’t heard nothing yet. Apparently because the entire opera is now a mere fantasy in Pinkerton’s head, Ozawa then, contra Puccini, inserts the character into nearly all of the first part of the Second Act. That means while Butterfly pines for Pinkerton’s return, he is simultaneously a very present silent figure– walking around Butterfly and Suzuki, eyeing their actions with concern, and even attempting to embrace her—as she sings “Un bel di” no less. Not only is this distracting as hell but it completely upstages the principal action in some of the most crucial moments of the opera.

Ozawa saves his greatest, i.e., worst revisionism for the tragic final scene. Cio-Cio-San commits suicide (in Pinkerton’s apartment) with her father’s sword—oddly, after menacing the ever-present Pinkerton with it—and she dies. But not really. She strips off her wig and outer garments and then strides proudly across the front of the stage, presumably as an ennobled figure of Asian female empowerment. In a final gratuitous middle-finger, she turns and glares at the audience on the discordant final chord, as if to say, “You all killed me, you evil Round-Eyes—but I am Japanese Woman and I emerge victorious!” 

Why couldn’t Ozawa just write his own opera and leave Puccini and the rest of us alone?

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Singing often seemed like the least important element of this production. But, fortunately, the vocal side was largely well served Saturday with one crucial exception.

Over the past two decades the trend has been to cast Butterflys who may not necessarily have the big dramatic voice to ride over Puccini’s orchestra but who can be more dramatically credible as a teenage Japanese bride.

Karah Son has sung the role of Cio-Cio-San in San Francisco and numerous European companies and festivals. The Korean soprano makes an engaging stage presence and showed worthy dramatic instincts in a role that has become her signature.

But in this Lyric Opera debut, Son’s singing too often came up short. Even allowing for a lighter-voiced Butterfly, her lyric soprano seemed two sizes too small for the role. More problematic was Son’s wide vibrato with loud or sustained notes jarringly wobbly.

In the showpiece “Un bel di,” Son’s singing had solid expressive commitment—even with Pinkerton hanging about—but sorely lacked power and tonal richness. Perhaps she was husbanding her resources, since Son rose to the challenge of the death scene with greater volume, dramatic intensity and impassioned singing. (Though Ozawa’s off-putting coda didn’t do much for Son or her character.)

No reservations need be made about the Pinkerton of Evan LeRoy Johnson, who made an impressive Lyric Opera debut. The tall, strapping Minnesota native proved an ideal fit for the caddish American naval officer who casually marries the 15-year-old Cio-Cio-San only to abandon her after the wedding night. 

Johnson displayed a robust and penetrating tenor voice. He brought Yankee swagger to the first act as well as greater sympathy than many in the role—endearingly awkward in meeting Cio-Cio-San’s relatives and ardent yet respectful in his interactions with his bride. Johnson brought rich, impassioned tone to the love duet and guilt-wracked torture to  “Addio, fiorito asil” when the American officer/gamer belatedly realizes the tragedy caused by his selfishness.

The idiocy of having a sympathetic Pinkerton lurking around in Act II wasn’t the tenor’s fault, of course, though it did serve one useful purpose—for once the singer playing Pinkerton wasn’t vociferously booed at the curtain call.

As Suzuki, Nozomi Kato showed a rich mezzo voice and sang superbly, with the Flower Duet and Act II trio proving vocal highlights of a very mixed evening. Dramatically, the character of Butterfly’s friend seemed oddly nebulous, more a result of Ozawa’s muddled revisionism than any dramatic lack on Kato’s part.

Zachary Nelson cut a rather Mephistophelian figure as Sharpless, yet sang well and brought the requisite humanity to the American consul.

It was good to have Rodell Rosel back—a reminder of happier Lyric days—to reprise his deliciously odious Goro, the marriage broker. 

Sihao Hu unfurled a rich, imposing baritone as Prince Yamadori, Butterfly’s rejected suitor. Alexis Peart was a big-voiced, formidable presence as Kate Pinkerton. Both are first-year Ryan Opera Center members.

The all-female, Japanese (and Japanese-American) creative team only served to prove that adhering to strict gender and racial quotas—even when well-intentioned—is no guarantee of success. (Who knew?) 

The scenic design by “dots” (a New York-based trio) was largely successful, with Pinkerton’s apartment a nicely pointed depiction of modern-living banality with wall-hanging manga; the colorful main Japanese house set was basic but effective. (The fluid movements of the sets, with the flat splitting into two and moving to the wings worked flawlessly.) Less happy was the kitschy marital bed that descending from above, festooned with pink Japanese lanterns, suggesting a short-time motel across from the Nagasaki naval base.

The lighting by Yuki Nakase Link was a wildly mixed bag— sometimes quite beautiful in the purples and reds of Act I, but stark and shadowy in Act 2, like an East German interrogation room circa 1972. The abrupt switching of primary light colors at key dramatic moments proved heavy-handed and overdone. Maiko Matsushima’s costuming was a confounding mix even for a modern-dress production—colorful traditional Japanese gowns vied with garish styles that seemed to have little to do with the characters. (What’s with the purple and green hair for Butterfly and Suzuki?) Ozawa’s stage direction was more successful than his concept, moving the action fluidly and efficiently.

In his 2018 Lyric Opera debut—also Puccini with La Bohème—conductor Domingo Hindoyan made an uneven impression. So, of course, he was invited back. 

While attentive to the singers, the Venezuelan conductor’s stately tempos and mostly quiet dynamics resulted in a kind of miniaturized chamber version of Puccini’s mercurial score. Perhaps some of that tamping down was to accommodate his light-voiced Butterfly, but the results too often took the guts and drama out of the music.

At times Saturday’s opening felt more like a cautious rehearsal than a live performance—going bar to bar without the requisite sweep and surging to Puccini’s big moments. Dramatic tension was sorely lacking, and the roiling orchestral climaxes proved consistently underpowered, lacking in passion and impact.

Madama Butterfly runs though April 12. lyricopera.org

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