Last year my family and I went to see Puccini’s Madama Butterfly performed at the Royal Opera House. I should mention I suppose that it was the live streaming we attended, at Leeds’s Cottage Road Cinema, rather than the actual event, lest you think your blogger can actually afford to ponce about in the capital, with family in tow, and attend operas at £175 a ticket. Anyway, attend the live streaming we did, and a comfortable and relatively uncostly affair it was.

Operas are not exactly unknown for their exploration of tragic themes, but you would be hard pressed to find a more perfect example of tragedy as expressed in music than Puccini’s masterpiece. Indeed, it was a personal favourite of the composer himself who described it as ‘the most felt and most expressive opera that I have conceived’. This production was directed by Antonio Pappano (who first appeared on my radar in 2015 when I caught his excellent TV series about opera singers, Classical Voices) and featured Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho in the starring role.

Madama Butterfly is set in Japan at the start of the twentieth century, and tells the tale of the teenage geisha Cio-Cio San (“Butterfly”) and her doomed marriage to Pinkerton, an American naval lieutenant. To Pinkerton, the marriage is one of convenience and shortly after the wedding he leaves Japan. Three years later, Butterfly is still waiting for him, and despite her maid Suzuki endeavouring to convince her that Pinkerton is not coming back, Butterfly won’t listen…and just that dogged belief alone, against all rationale, is enough to break your heart. We know only too well, as does Suzuki, that he’s not coming back.

Actually Pinkerton does come back, but not to Butterfly. Instead, he is – cruel blow! – with his new American wife, and from this point on, Puccini focuses ever deeper on the heartache that culminates in Butterfly committing suicide.

I have selected the electrifying Un bel dì vedremo (One fine day we’ll see) to showcase Ermonela Jaho’s (and Puccini’s) formidable artistic skill. Jaho, as Butterfly, delivers this ravishing and pathos-filled solo from a deep well of emotion. As she steadfastly sings of her belief that Pinkerton will return to her, we can hardly watch, knowing that tragedy awaits! It’s a great performance…