Butterfly’s Trouble To Premiere In the U.S. At 45th Street Theater

Voice Afire Pocket Opera & Cabaret will present the U.S. premiere of Butterfly’s Trouble, Ray Luedeke’s intriguing English language adaptation of Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly and David Belasco’s play Madame Butterfly. The production will perform at the 45th Street Theatre, January 7-13.

In the piece, Trouble, son of Madame Butterfly and Lieutenant Pinkerton – two years old at the end of Puccini’s opera – is now a middle-aged and guilt-ridden man. He has returned from the USA, his adopted home, to Nagasaki, Japan, to discover the truth about his mother’s death. The date is August 7, 1945 – the day after the atom bomb blast that leveled the city. As he stands in the ruins of his Japanese mother’s house, looking at the devastation around him, contemplating suicide, he sees a vision: he has returned to the Spring of 1900, the year before his own birth. As in a dream, the spirits of Butterfly and Pinkerton come to him, and Trouble experiences the beautiful and tragic events that led to his mother’s death.

Soprano Julianne Park will star as Cho-Cho-San with tenor John Tedeschi as Lt. Pinkerton and actor Hassan Nazari-Robati as Trouble. The ensemble is completed by musical director Jemmy Chen on keyboard, Edmund Bagnell on violin, Guy Chadash on clarinet, and Bobbie Lee Crow III on cello. Soprano Katherine Cardin is the cover for Cho-Cho-San.

For tickets and more information, click here.