What: Madama Butterfly
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Opens tonight, continues to April 19
Tickets: $25 to $145; 250-386-6121 or rmts.bc.ca
When Pacific Opera Victoria lost its Madama Butterfly just three months before rehearsals, the company was left fluttering for a replacement.
The Canadian soprano initially hired to sing the role made a surprise announcement: She was retiring due to health problems. All her engagements were cancelled. It was then up to POV’s artistic director, Timothy Vernon, to find a replacement.
This was a challenge. The lead role of Butterfly (Cio-Cio San) in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is demanding. And in the opera world, singers are typically booked at least 18 months ahead.
Immediately after the cancellation, Vernon travelled to Vienna to lead an opera tour. There he happened to catch a performance of Puccini’s Turandot at the Volksoper — one of the city’s grandest opera houses.
“The overall musical performance wasn’t thrilling,” Vernon said. “But there was really one element in it. And it was the soprano. I was listening to her, thinking it’s a wonderful voice, it’s a beautiful voice.”
It was Jee Hye Han, a 31-year-old singer once dubbed “Baby Butterfly” by critics.
Vernon emailed the POV offices. Within a day, the opera company had enlisted Han to sing Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly, which opens tonight at the Royal Theatre. The production co-stars Newfoundland tenor Adam Luther as Pinkerton, with Giuseppe Pietraroia conducting and Diana Leblanc directing.
A native of Seoul, South Korea, Han is making her North American debut. Something of a Puccini specialist, the soprano has sung Madama Butterfly twice before and Turandot 10 times (she has also sung Beethoven, Wagner, Verdi and Mahler). Han, the only child of a construction contractor and a housewife, studied at the Korea National University of Arts and Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts.
“She’s got a true Puccini voice,” Vernon said. “It has a nice amplitude. It has an easy top [register], a nice, thrilling, ringing top. And she also has the capacity to sing a very beautiful legato sustained line.”
Madama Butterfly, which premièred in 1904 at Milan’s La Scala, is a true product of cultural internationalism. It’s based on a story by an American. Puccini saw a British stage adaptation by David Balesco (an American who grew up in Victoria, see sidebar). Sung in Italian, it’s the story of Pinkerton, an American naval officer who marries — and ultimately betrays — an innocent Japanese girl, Cio-Cio San.
The addition of Han to the POV creative team adds even more of an international flair, Vernon says.
“When I introduced her to the cast, I said: ‘Here we have a wonderful Korean singer singing a Japanese character in Italian, who offstage only really speaks German, apart from Korean. And how Canadian is that?’”
Han, soft-spoken and amiable, chatted last week via a Korean translator at a downtown rooftop lounge. She said following directions from the opera company’s director and conductor presented no real problems — partly because one of the other singers speaks German.
“I use body language, facial expressions, hand gestures,” Han said. “And I can actually understand 70 per cent of the conversation in English. It’s been working so far.”
She was “surprised in a good way” to discover POV wanted her for Madama Butterfly. Han says the goal of many European opera singers is to break into the North American market, although the United States is more typically on the radar.
“I’m actually really excited. And I thought it would be really good experience, to get a head start in a North American theatre,” she said.
She first took the role of Cio-Cio San when she made her debut at the Vienna Volksoper. Han was just 27, which is relatively young for a technically demanding role usually tackled by veteran singers.
“That’s why I was called the ‘Baby Butterfly,’ ” Han said with a laugh.
Although the opera, which contains Cio-Cio San’s famous aria Un bel di, is vocally challenging, she finds the acting in Madama Butterfly the greatest hurdle. Hans says it’s not easy expressing the character’s contrasting predominant emotions, that is, Cio-Cio San’s love for Pinkerton and the sadness she experiences in the face of tragedy.
Han first started singing in choirs in Seoul as a child. Later, she sang classical and opera at a high school specializing in the arts. Her first full-fledged opera was a college production of The Marriage of Figaro, for which she sang the Countess.
So far, Canada has lived up to Han’s expectations. Before departing her adopted hometown of Vienna, her manager showed her photographs of the country she had never before visited.
“There were some really large trees. The scenery was like you see in Victoria,” she said.
“The people are nice. And it’s such a beautiful country.”