An ugly American, a young woman abused. Does the plot of this sublime opera sound familiar?
Madama Butterfly
Opera Australia
Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House, January 3
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★½
Soprano Guanqun Yu brought together simplicity of utterance, coloured transparency, and thrilling power to Cio-Cio-San (Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”) creating a performance that was both disarming and overpowering.
For this revival, Opera Australia has reverted to the spiritual calm of Moffatt Oxenbould’s popular 1997 production in which Russell Cohen and Peter England’s design sequesters the action on a serene platform surrounded by limpid water attended by silent masked figures in uncoloured cloth who facilitate the action as though from another world.
In 2019, OA replaced this with a more menacing creation by Graeme Murphy in which the “pinned butterfly” (represented by a dancer) became an unsettling motif.
Oxenbould’s conception creates Butterfly’s inner and outer world as a place of lonely quiet beauty and Yu inhabited it with captivating voice and stylised grace, turning Butterfly’s coy playfulness to fiery resolve at the close.
Stepping in at short notice Diego Torre, as the American lieutenant Pinkerton, sang with masterly professional polish and a mature knowledge of the part’s vocal terrain. The tone was always aptly rounded and the pitch true.
It suited the dramatic conflict that, in Act 1, one worried his vocal robustness would overwhelm Yu until she blazed forward in the closing duet. This opening of Opera Australia’s 2026 season was also an auspicious opportunity to welcome conductor Andrea Battistoni as Opera Australia’s new Music Director.
Battistoni allowed the music of Act 1 to unfold without rush, galvanising the Opera Australia Orchestra’s energy into major points of emphasis in the later acts and sustaining fluid but finely calibrated momentum in which the singers could foment compelling drama.
As the consul Sharpless, Samuel Dundas was aloof and mildly reproving in the scenes with Torre while creating warmth and tenderness with Yu. As Butterfly’s maid, Suzuki, Sian Sharp was impressive for the way she allowed sudden unexpected power to burst from a demeanour of supplicant restraint and a voice of rounded comeliness.
Virgilio Marino as the marriage broker Goro needled with incessant sharp edge. David Parkin as Butterfly’s uncle the ‘Bonze’, and Leon Vitogiannis as Yamadori brought savage and opulent colour to their entrances, while Jane Ede sang Kate Pinkerton with demure gentleness.
Oxenbould’s approach excludes the outside to allow the drama to evoke its own world and is never political. Ironically, that made Puccini’s appropriation of the Star Spangled Banner as a leitmotif more than usually wince-making and Pinkerton’s marriage to a 15-year-old more odious.
Any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental and completely obvious.
MUSIC
UNDERWORLD
Carriageworks, December 29
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★★½
The lore of Underworld goes deep. It’s been a rich, rambling journey over four decades – featuring existential curveballs and crowning glories in clubs, stadiums, soundtracks and their massive, stasis-defying catalogue. Now celebrating 30 years of Born Slippy (Nuxx), the rave firmament Rick Smith and Karl Hyde occupy is a legacy assured.
Sixty-something titans of anti-conformist dance music, sculpting mind-warping odysseys through their ever-expanding polygenre of techno and progressive, ambient and dub, city-scavenged poetry and art-rock, they’re the result of the generation of Kraftwerk and Joy Division crashing into the UK’s acid house revolution, to pioneer their own infectious groove that is dark and long, propulsive and psychogeographic, experimental and euphoric.
Their live shows are legendary. This one, launching Finely Tuned’s summer warehouse series at Carriageworks, may have ended a smidge early, at the rave rat’s waking hour of 10.20pm (likely a set times gaffe). But over their 80 minutes on stage, in front of a sold-out Monday crowd of old, young and all-shining faces, these two best mates gave us everything.
Hyde was up there shaking with the holy spirit of techno, our bard and puckish leader of the dance. Smith, the wizard of the machine, calmly working a rig so enormous it took half an hour to set up after opener Ross From Friends.
Unfurling during this intermission, too, was a stage-spanning LED curtain: syncing with mega-screen visuals and a high-precision cosmic light show, adding new dimensions of colour and texture to club anthems like Two Months Off and Cowgirl, as well as their thunderously evolving extempore beats.
And the fog rolled in.
The Carriageworks bays for these events are huge, resembling an industrial cathedral: it takes a lot of smoke to fill them. But near the end, dense mist had enveloped the entire front section. This included the stage itself, with our duo disappearing completely for perhaps 10 minutes.
Through the billows, light speared; on the spine of the ceiling, shapes ran rivers. Intentional or not, the effect was surreal and not unwelcome, with punters invited to surrender completely to the sound.
Born Slippy, that blessed former B-side, sent us high into the night. What joker, though, decided to play Werewolves of London on the speakers immediately after to boot us out?
Underworld were in Australia only last year for VIVID – here’s to hoping they make another killer return in 2026.