Madama Butterfly

The hit of the 2005-06 London opera season comes to The Met in an exciting new co-production between The Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera. Stage and film director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) presents Butterfly as a Japanese play, complete with Bunraku-style puppets (by Blind Summit Theatre) and translucent Shoji screens designed by Michael Levine. Han Feng’s costumes are a riot of color and Carolyn Choa’s choreography explores the boundaries between East and West.

Singing her signature Butterfly role for the first time at The Met, Cristina Gallardo-Domâs is the doomed Cio-Cio-San. The marvelous tenor Marcello Giordani is the unfaithful Pinkerton, and the deft baritone Dwayne Croft sings the sympathetic role of Sharpless.

“This Butterfly is at once the simplest and most sumptuous thing we’ve ever seen. It is the meeting of Japanese kabuki and Western opera but shot through with the finely tuned manner of a Broadway show.” — The Independent [UK]