Friday, March 15, 2013
'Madama Butterfly' a tale of love, betrayal, death and more
TribLIVE: Every time soprano Maria Luigia Borsi sings the title role of “Madama Butterfly,” it is a dream come true for her because she fell in love with the opera when she was 7.
She even memorized the second act as a child.
“I like this opera because it has every aspect of life in it — love, intimate dreams, marriage, motherhood, betrayal, abandonment, death, dignity and desolation,” she says. “For that reason, I have the possibility to use my voice in different ways in the same scene, sometimes a sweet color, sometimes like a baby, sometimes sharp as a knife.”
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3 comments:
This sounds like a beautiful story, and it is true that it covers all aspects of life, from love to betrayal to death. The most intriguing part of the Pittsburgh production for me, however, is the use of the Japanese moveable walls, usually made of rice paper, but instead covered with cotton for this show. There are so many possibilities that these "walls" represent since they are so mobile, and even more because of the variety it allows in the lighting design. It would be so interesting to try lighting scenes from different angles through the cotton of the walls to see how this changes the mood that is represented by colors that might otherwise means something quite different.
This seems like a very captivating opera and like Emma said, it has the potential to be a really beautiful set. I would love o see how the cotton walls look (as a substitute to the rice paper look). I have never seen a show that is set in 1800s Japan, but there could be some very elegant designs in this show; from all the departments actually. There seem to be such extreme emotions throughout this show and portraying these scenes without being melodramatic could be something interesting to keep in mind.
This musical sounds beautiful yet so unbearably heartbreaking, I would love to watch it one day. I though the concept of movable Japanese wall is interesting in terms of both set and lighting. I wonder how well they would work for silhouettes. It seems like they would work well (since the only thing that would obstruct the light are the bars across which the fabric is stretched). I also wonder how lighting the cotton walls would differ from lighting rice paper? The two materials have such different qualities.
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