Leonard Turnevicius

Pinning down Madama Butterfly

What: Madama Butterfly

Who: Opera Hamilton

Where: Hamilton Place

When: Tuesday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 2 and Friday, April 3 at 8 p.m.

Cost: $35, $55, $75, $95. Tuesday only prices: ‘30ish’ and under, $30, $50, $70, elementary school student $10, high school $15, college/university $20, parent/chaperone with student $20.

Call: 905-527-7627 ext. 221

It’s a tearjerker, a tragic tale of innocence betrayed.

Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, an American naval officer leasing a house in Nagasaki, Japan, contracts to marry a 15 year old geisha, Cio-Cio-San, nicknamed Butterfly. But the besotted teen is disowned by her family for renouncing her ancestral religion. What’s worse, the love ‘em and leave ‘em, lascivious Lieutenant leaves the Land of the Rising Sun for the Land of the Free. He returns three years later, remorseful, with his new American wife in tow to fetch the son born to Butterfly. Distraught, Butterfly commits hari-kari.

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the pillars in the operatic repertoire. The musical score, which took four years to compose, is a marvel. There’s Un bel di, the opera’s hit tune, beloved of sopranos the world over. There’s also the burnishing love duet at the end of Act 1, and the charming Humming Chorus in Act 2. And there’s Puccini’s music which masterfully underscores the opera’s emotional arc while delineating each of its characters in the process.

“Every time I open the score, I find little details which I hadn’t found the time before,” said Opera Hamilton’s music director Daniel Lipton who’ll conduct Madama Butterfly in Hamilton Place next Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. When asked to rank Butterfly in Puccini’s canon, Lipton replied, “It’s a wonderful thing about being a conductor, is that you become a Don Giovanni of music because each one is the only one. When I’m conducting Butterfly, it’s the greatest opera in the world."

Butterfly will be sung by Ailan Zhu, who arrived in Hamilton from her home in Beijing, China two Saturdays ago. “I love this opera. It’s one of my favourite roles,” said Zhu. “For me, it’s more close to my personality. The reason I like it very much, I don’t have to act that much. It’s close to my own culture.”

Close, but not the same. “Chinese are different than Japanese,” added Zhu. “I do the little steps they do. The little gestures with the hands are totally different than the Chinese.”

Zhu, who studied at Beijing’s Central Conservatory from 1974 to 1984 before heading off to Connecticut Hartt School, recalls seeing the opera in China’s capital after the Cultural Revolution.

When she began studying the role of Butterfly in Connecticut, she was advised not to perform it until she was 40. “They say this is a very emotional role, not only the size of the vocal thing, but mentally and emotionally is difficult to handle,” explained Zhu. “I didn’t take that role for a quite a long time."

Zhu recalls that she first sang Butterfly about ten years ago. Since then, she’s sung it around 100 times in America and Europe. However, she’s only done it once in China, last year in “The Egg,” Beijing’s recently built mammoth performing arts centre.

It’s no secret that the opera trades on American and Japanese stereotypes. But has Zhu, an Oriental woman, been typecast in the role? “I definitely say no,” responded Zhu emphatically, “because I rejected it for so many years.”

With Hamilton Place booked out next Saturday, Lipton, Zhu and company will have back to back performances over two nights. That’s no easy feat, considering Butterfly’s long sing in Act 2.

“I’ve done that before…in London a couple times,” said Zhu confidently. “But here, I think as long as we don’t push ourself, and just take a little easy, and should be OK as well.”

***

Hamilton's Albert Alexanian was recently appointed to the board of directors of the Ontario Arts Council. A long time arts patron, Alexanian was also past president of Opera (Ontario) Hamilton.

Prazak Quartet: A long tradition of stringing us along

Showtime

Who: Prazak Quartet

When: Friday, March 6 at 8 p.m.

Where: Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts, 126 James St. S.

Cost: $27, senior $22, student $10

Call: 905-528-5628

Few countries have as rich a string quartet ensemble history as does the present day Czech Republic.

From the Bohemian (Czech) String Quartet in 1892 to the Sevcik, Herold, and Ondricek quartets of pre-WWII Czechoslovakia, to post-war groups such as the Smetana, Prague, Talich, and Vlach quartets, Czech string ensembles have long ranked among the finest anywhere.

Standing in that august lineage is the Prazak Quartet. Founded in Prague in the early 1970s, its original line-up was coached by a member from each of the Vlach, Prague, and Smetana quartets.

The Smetanas had a decisive influence on the Prazaks. “They prepared us for competition and professional concert life,” said Prazak founding violist Josef Kluson speaking from his country home in the forest outside of Pardubice in the Czech Republic two weeks ago after returning from a tour to New Zealand.

And the Prazaks were prepared well. After victories in competitions in the C.S.S.R., they took top prize at the 1978 Evian String Quartet Competition in France. Though they turned pro two years later, their coaching sessions didn’t stop.

In the early 1980’s they met LaSalle Quartet founding first violinist Walter Levin who invited them to study with him for several months at the University of Cincinnati.

“We wanted to become more familiar with the Second Viennese School,” said Kluson of the string quartet works by Schönberg, Berg, and von Webern. “In our time when we started, this music has been completely neglected, not only by communists...As young people, we wanted to bring these first quartets to Prague audience(s).”

Tomorrow night, the Prazaks bring von Webern’s Langsamer Satz (Slow Movement) to their concert at the Hamilton Conservatory. As Kluson recalled, Levin hated this work, dismissing it as “not the purest of music.” The nine-minute piece was written in a late-Romantic style in 1905 by von Webern after hiking in Lower Austria’s Waldwinkel with his eventual wife.

With 2009 being the bicentennial of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth, as well as Franz Joseph Haydn’s death, the Prazaks have programmed the former’s op. 12 and the latter’s op. 50 no. 6.

With its croaking theme in the last movement, Haydn’s op. 50 no. 6 has garnered the nickname “The Frog.” Yet, that very theme foreshadows by a century and a quarter the Second Viennese School’s technique of Klangfarbenmelodie, a melody created in part by using successive hues of instrumental colour. Only in Haydn’s case, he explores the colour contrasts between playing on an open string versus the changes of fingering on a string. “It’s how the Austrian frogs are singing,” joked Kluson of Haydn’s technique.

To bring the tone colour of those “Austrian frogs” to the listener’s ears, the Prazaks use a combination of old and modern instruments. The violinists play on a 1730 Guadagnini, and 1690 Albani respectively, while Kluson uses a 1985 Pilar, and the cellist a 2006 Bayon from Lisbon. “We tried many, many instruments,” said Kluson. “This is the best combination we’ve found.”

Chamber Music Hamilton regulars will be delighted to know that Kluson recently met former Prague Quartet cellist and erstwhile CMH artistic director Zdenek Konicek at a concert in Prague. Kluson reported that Konicek, who left Dundas for Prague in 2005, recently turned 90 and is in good health.