Photo by Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of Chicago

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I haven’t done the math, but there have been probably more performances of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” at Lyric Opera than any other opera. Most famously, Maria Callas did her only staged performances of the role here at Lyric in the early years of the company. During the Ardis Krainik years, ticket sales of “Butterfly” were so assured that the role became a retreat for haggard divas.

Kudos to Bill Mason for having enough respect for the work to realize that if you are going to do it, at least this time around, do it right. I lost count of how many times we have sat through the Hal Prince production created here in 1982, and even Prince has long ago stopped bothering to stage it, sending Vincent Liotta instead the last three times, all with mediocre singers.

Soprano Patricia Racette has made Butterfly her own in recent years, giving us a preview of what to expect in a concert version at Ravinia two seasons ago where her co-star, tenor Frank Lopardo, was a no-show. Lopardo made it this time around, and the pair managed to bring considerable credibility to the usually far-fetched melodrama. True, Racette’s voice has its problems at this stage of her career, and Butterfly’s entrance was plowed through like a bull in a china shop; as at Ravinia, she wisely chose not to take the high note. But once over the bridge, the opera was all hers and she was able to match every note with drama to spare. And though we have heard more beautiful love duets, what lingers in this production is how much Racette and Lopardo really seem to be feeling for one another as the sliding door slowly ends Act I for their honeymoon.

Once you actually buy that such a deep connection is made between the two, then Pinkerton’s abandonment of Butterfly and her standing by him against her villagers sets up the tragedy of her suicide in a far more profound way. I cannot remember the last Butterfly where I actually shed tears at the end, but things click so well here, it would be a challenge not to do so. Some of the supporting roles are a disappointment (neither Suzuki nor Sharpless could be adequately heard in their duets and both roles were laying too low for the singers) but Sir Andrew Davis does a magnificent job of revealing Puccini’s score in all of its many colors. (Dennis Polkow)

Through January 29, 2009 at Lyric Opera, Wacker Drive at Madison, (312)332-2244.

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Operatic tastes have always been fickle, and what was the masterpiece of one moment can today be considered trash, and vice-versa. Mere decades ago the operas of Puccini, today’s Lyric Opera favorite, were routinely considered trite and trashy, sentimentalized and watered-down Verdi with vulgar dashes of Wagner. When I once asked Sir Georg Solti why he hadn’t conducted or recorded more Puccini in his long career as an opera conductor, he winced and described Puccini as an “overrated hack.” So it should come as no surprise that Bizet’s “Djamileh,” once championed by no less than Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, fell out of favor more than a century ago and has yet to make it back it back into the repertoire. One practical reason is that the one-act work clocks in at only an hour, and thus has to be filled out to make a full evening. But as the current and mega-rare revival by the City of Chicago’s free summer opera program demonstrates, the work has been ignored at the peril of lovers of French opera. Yes, this story of a slave girl in love with her playboy master is trivial, but would those who would attack the work on that basis alone really want to defend the narrative merits of the shopworn warhorse “Carmen,” for which “Djamileh” is clearly an important stepping stone? Using the space under the newly restored Tiffany Dome done up as an inviting harem complete with large oriental rug, cushiony pillows and water pipe, the colorfully costumed characters sing in French with subtitles with the dialogue spoken in English. Mezzo soprano Katherine Pracht appropriately pines and sings her heart out as the title character and her master Haroun (tenor Cornelius Johnson) gives moments of unexpected tenderness and some wicked trills to his portrayal while the thankless role of matchmaker Splendiano who doesn’t get the girl is sung by baritone Bill McMurray. A short opening set of Middle Eastern music performed by Ronnie Malley on oud (Middle Eastern lute) and percussionist George Lawler perfectly complements the proceedings. (Dennis Polkow)

Free. 7:30pm. August 5, 7, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington; (312)742-8497.

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My soprano sister used to perform Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” throughout my formative years and I can remember thinking that, even within the pantheon of masochistic operatic heroines that she would portray, that “Butterfly” was particularly absurd and cruel despite the beautiful music. On one occasion, a Navy relative who had married in Japan and produced two beautiful Amer-Asian children even tried to get one of them to play the son who has to come in as Butterfly is about to dispatch herself because her Caucasian husband has abandoned her. The kid would always cry, despite constant and impressive bribes from his real Japanese mother who barely spoke English to do the role, and I remember thinking that the kid had the right idea and that he was more in tune with his ancestral Japanese heritage than either his mother or this goofy Puccini crap. The brilliance of David Henry Hwang’s “M Butterfly” is not only that he understands the harmful Asian stereotypes that such Western works perpetuate, but is also willing to skewer the equally problematic convention of traditional Chinese Opera, namely that females are played by males. Convincingly. Really convincingly. And though “M Butterfly” is now twenty years old, it remains, as BoHo Theatre’s current production reminds us, a work of startling originality that forces us to ask deep questions about how racial stereotypes color our romantic perceptions. You could quibble that the minimalist sets make you miss the visual beauty of past productions, but P. Marston Sullivan’s direction and the phenomenal performances more than compensate. Jeremy Young is blessedly understated and generically Western as Gallimard, which makes his affair, reflections and delusional sense of denial all the more credible. And David Rhee’s portrayal of submissive diva and spy Song is effective enough not only to make you forget which “M” this Butterfly may be but gives you the added ambiguity of making you wonder where his true heart may be. This work still packs quite a punch and raises important issues not only for both East and West, but for patriarchy run amok in any culture. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Heartland Studio Theatre, 7016 N. Glenwood, (773)293-0024. This production is now closed. 

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Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia and Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones took over as the leads in Puccini’s “La bohème” on November 9 and for the rest of what has thus far been a troubled run for Lyric Opera after Romanian superstar soprano Angela Gheorghiu was publicly fired for going AWOL during the rehearsal process and her understudy Elaine Alvarez ended up stepping in for her at the last minute. All of that backstage drama and the possibility that the production might not have gone on at all because of a potential strike by the American Guild of Musical Artists was averted by a last-minute contract settlement, but the production’s opening was still an understandably unstable and unsteady affair. Happily, things are faring better with the new leads, who are far more vocally and dramatically suited to their roles, giving the production a much-needed boost. It is now possible to see what retired Italian soprano Renata Scotto has in mind in her company directorial debut: a back-to-basics “bohème” that has removed the escalating snowballing excesses of a 35-year old production that has gone back to the simple but tragic love story. Farnocchia and Jones have extraordinary chemistry as Mimi and Rodolfo and Scotto never lets us forget where the center of attention should always be, all characters clearly fixated on the rise and fall of the couple’s relationship. Remaining caveats include that Sir Andrew Davis needs to tone down the Lyric Opera Orchestra, which is often overpowering the singing and, conversely, baritone Quinn Kelsey’s Marcello, which is usually lost in the mix with his colleagues whether in ensemble or duets, needs to be projecting more precisely, though perhaps the role is simply too low for him since the same thing happened opening night. And am I alone in thinking that soprano Nicole Cabell, for all of her gifts, has much too bright and shrill of a sound for Musetta? (Dennis Polkow) 

At the Civic Opera House, Wacker Drive at Madison, (312)332-2244. This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

When Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” first opened on Broadway in 1955, it was not a success. The playwright withdrew the work, save for a British revival, thinking he needed to rework it, and it is that version that we know as the play. Actors Workshop Theatre has made the bold move to present the original 1955 version, which given Miller’s minimalist set requirements where all of the action takes place in a Brooklyn apartment, is perfectly suited for the group’s small venue space. Is it a better play than the rewritten version that we know? No, particularly in the awkward device of the minor character of the lawyer of the story serving as its narrator and storyteller (how would he know the intimate dealings of the Carbone household: he only knows what little Eddie has told him, and in confidence?). Also greatly missed are the neighborhood characters that act as a kind of Greek chorus or witnesses to Eddie’s betrayal of his cousins, although co-directors Michael Corlucci and Jan Ellen Graves (the former who also plays Eddie), attempt to fill that void by having choral passages from Puccini’s “Turandot” piped in. Eddie is also a much less sympathetic character here, given that Miller later added exposition and domestic material that ambiguously suggests the possibility that his niece Catherine (Eva Gil) was innocently leading on her uncle with her girlish over-affections. But one aspect of the more streamlined original that was lost along the way that is far more effective here is the way in which the tension builds up across a single, virtually verismo-like act instead of being broken up. And the play’s heart—its questions about lust and loyalty, honor and manhood and filial piety run amuck, to say nothing about illegal immigration and its ongoing resonance more than half a century later—remains strongly in tact. (Dennis Polkow)

At Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, Chicago, IL 60660, (773)RAV-PLAY. This production is now closed.

It’s not easy to get a star the magnitude of Rumanian superstar soprano Angela Gheorghiu to sing in Chicago, and in fact, it has only happened on one previous occasion, when she and her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna, sang a spectacular “Romeo and Juliet” at Lyric Opera eight seasons ago. As is common at Lyric, the current production of Puccini’s “La boheme” revolves around a single star singer, which left the company in a precarious position when Gheorghiu went AWOL last week to be with her husband in New York. Retired Italian soprano Renata Scotto, making her directorial debut with Lyric and no stranger herself to diva demeanor, had egg on her face having to lead rehearsals without her star and the company decided to “fire” Gheorghiu hours before last Friday’s final dress rehearsal rather than risk a heated diva dual that could leave one or both divas taking a dive. This left Gheorghiu’s understudy, Cuban-American soprano Elaine Alvarez, in the even more precarious position of having to step out for Gheorghiu before a large house last Friday (Lyric treats its final dress rehearsals as a patron perk) to such loud boos that Lyric general manager William Mason interrupted the public rehearsal to chastise the crowd. There were no such boos at Monday’s opening, thanks in part to sympathy that had been generated for the company by the subsequent public release of the juicy details of the firing, and the fact that Alvarez did a credible, if not a memorable, job under the circumstances. The end result was a “boheme” that, with the exception of Italian tenor Roberto Aronica’s Rodolfo, the most notable performance of the evening, was stacked with Ryan Center singers and alumni that would be the envy of any regional opera house, but unfortunately, was not operating at the peak standard of an internationally renowned company. As previously scheduled, Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia and Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones take over for the November dates: stay tuned. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Civic Opera House, Wacker Drive at Madison, (312)332-2244. This production is now closed.