The last time American soprano Corinne Winters sang with San Diego Opera in 2017, she played the dying courtesan Violetta in Verdi’s in “La traviata.”
Now she’s back as the doomed heroine Cio-Cio San in San Diego Opera’s new production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” playing Friday and next Sunday at the San Diego Civic Theatre.
Playing tragic women has always been an occupational hazard for opera sopranos. But Winters has become a sensation in Europe over the past three years by playing the title roles in multiple productions of the Czech operas “Kat’a Kabanova” and “Rusalka” and the Polish opera “Halka.” Like Violetta and Cio-Cio San, Kat’a, Rusalka and Halka all suffer and die at the end of their stories.
Winters has been praised by critics across Europe, not only for vocal fireworks but also for her fierce and heartbreaking performances as these emotionally tortured women. But the 41-year-old Maryland native said that of all the characters she has played in her career, Cio-Cio San is the most demanding — both vocally and emotionally.
“It’s the combination of physical and vocal stamina and the really heightened, intense emotion which makes it the hardest thing out there in my repertoire,” Winters said, in a interview earlier this month in San Diego. “Act two has more singing than probably all of Mimi in ‘La boheme’ and half of ‘Tosca,’ as well. It’s just nonstop. It’s hard enough to sing the role, but then you add the emotion of the role.”
This production will be Winters’ fourth “Butterfly” production since 2021, when she made her role debut at Italy’s Teatro dell’Opera di Roma with just six weeks notice after COVID-19 lockdowns began to lift. Fortunately, Winters had spent her idle hours during the pandemic learning new roles that included Cio-Cio San. Still, she was intimidated to perform the role for the first time in the country where the opera premiered in May 1904.
“I’d been offered ‘Butterfly’ (productions) before, but I wasn’t ready, whether it was vocally or emotionally. But when these opportunities come along, you just seize it,” she said. “It was daunting to do it in Rome, but Rome is my favorite city and I speak Italian. It was the most full circle beautiful experience to do that and the public embraced me. It was amazing.”
Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” was based on the 1900 play “Madame Butterfly” by Broadway playwright David Belasco. His source material was a short story inspired by French novelist Pierre Loti’s “Madame Chrysanthème.” Loti based his book on his own experiences as a military officer who dallied with local women during his stopovers in Japan.
In the opera version, the officer is American Navy Capt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, who callously marries the 15-year-old Japanese geisha Cio-Cio San and deserts her just weeks after their wedding night. Cio-Cio San waits three years for him to return to Japan, believing he will take her to America for a better life. But when she discovers Pinkerton’s true motivation for coming back, she makes the ultimate sacrifice.
Over the past 120 years, “Madama Butterfly” has been in and out of favor with critics who find the “Orientalism” of the plot dated and Pinkerton’s sexual predation of a minor offensive. But Winters said she believes the opera deserves to be seen.
“I know this piece in some countries is controversial. But I don’t see it that way, in the sense that it’s so offensive or irrelevant it shouldn’t be played,” she said. “What is shows is the extreme beauty and the extreme dark side of humanity, and that good people who are flawed make choices that have ripple effects that affect people’s lives and even end lives.”
Winters said Cio-Cio San’s choices in the opera make sense when her personal situation is considered. Her father commits suicide, so with no money or status, she is forced to become a geisha. Ultimately she sees marrying Pinkerton as an invitation to a better life. And when he leaves, she never gives up hope that he will return.
“She’s incredibly young and naive. So much of her perception of Western culture is the idea that it will get her out of the situation she’s in,” Winters said. “And also, having her father commit suicide and her finding him, that leaves an imprint … Her personality becomes quite manic. She’s very temperamental and fiery, which is often not talked about. She becomes delusional, angry and combative. Her mind is telling her that (Pinkerton) is coming back. This psychological projection is why she gets so mad.”
San Diego Opera’s Principal Conductor Yves Abel will conduct “Madama Butterfly,” which he describes as a “masterpiece” he has conducted more than a dozen times at opera houses around the world, including in Japan. He said Japanese opera-goers embrace the opera despite the fact that it depicts Japan and its people through a Western lens.
“First and foremost, it’s really a universal story and this 15-year-old Japanese girl could just as easily hav ebeen a young French girl who had to marry an aristocrat in Sweden. The fact is that around this period (when Puccini composed “Butterfly”) this movement of Orientalism was really strong and it was reflected in all the arts, including ballet, paintings and furniture. It swept the world. There’s a reason why Puccini chose that topic, and the social language is completely different from ‘Tosca’ and ‘La boheme.’ That idea really triggered his imagination.”
The San Diego Opera production will co-star English tenor Adam Smith in his company debut as Pinkerton. Also making their company debuts are Korean baritone Kidon Choi as U.S. Embassy consul Sharpless and American mezzo-soprano Stephanie Doche as Suzuki, Cio-Cio San’s faithful maid. It will also feature the San Diego Opera Chorus. The opera will be sung in Italian with English supertitles projected on a screen above the stage.
Since her first “Butterfly” in Rome, Winters has played the role of Cio-Cio San in Frankfurt, Germany, and in Nice, France. The San Diego production marks her U.S. debut in the role. Each of the past three productions featured very different directorial interpretations.
In the Rome production, the story was set in the late 1990s where Pinkerton was a land developer and Cio-Cio San celebrated her patriotism by wearing cut-off jean shorts, Converse shoes and a tank top decorated with an American flag.
The director of the 2023 Frankfurt production didn’t set the story in any specific time or place and instead focused on Cio-Cio San’s desire to move up in the world.
And in last month’s production in Nice, the director set the story in 1945 Nagasaki, Japan, in the aftermath of the U.S. atomic bombing. Because there were no flower petals to shake from the trees in the bombed city for the opera’s famous “Flower Duet,” Cio-Cio San and Suzuki instead tore up colored paper and scattered the bits on the scorched ground.
Winters said this week’s San Diego Opera production, directed by Jose Maria Condemi, will be the most traditional staging of “Butterfly” she has done.
“I’m loving it so far,” she said. “Everyone is going very traditional and very specific in the way they’re bowing and showing respect in the way that Puccini intended. We’re going through old Japanese magazines to learn how to fold the kimono and put it on. I’s the most authentic approach I’ve had so far and it’s teaching me a lot.”
Since arriving in San Diego for rehearsals, Winters said she has enjoyed the warm, sunny weather, as well as the easy access to great Mexican food and cold-brew coffee — two things that are hard to find in Europe, where she mostly works these days.
Looking ahead, Winters said she’ll make her Metropolitan Opera debut next year playing Mimi in “La bohème.” She’s also preparing to take on several new roles, including Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades and Strauss’ Salome. Yes, three of these opera heroines die at the end of their operas, but Winters said she loves the contrast these characters, and Cio-Cio San, offer her as a singing actor.
“What is fascinating to me about Cio-Cio San is that she’s full of contradictions,” she said. “She’s both incredibly hopeful and tragically pessimistic, strong and fragile, naive and wise. It’s clear from the music and libretto that Puccini also saw her as this multi-dimensional figure, not the stereotype of a long-suffering woman, or the stereotype of a Japanese geisha. I adore this piece precisely for its contradictions. While it’s full of immense beauty, it also forces us to confront the dark side in each of us, and in humanity as a whole. To me, that’s a sign of great art.”
‘Madama Butterfly’
When: 7 p.m. Friday, April 26; 2 p.m. Sunday, April 28
Where: San Diego Opera at the San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown
Tickets: $40 and up
Info: (619) 533-7000
Online: sdopera.org
pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
