Opposite la Grigorian was Jonathan Tetelman, who had debuted here earlier in the season in La Rondine. I’d seen Tetelman once before, as the Duke in an oddly conceived Rigoletto at the Berkshire Opera, in which he looked uncomfortable and sounded not quite gathered together. This was much better, lively and confident. His voice was bright, clear, and in tune, the words distinct and the line well maintained. It rose to some mettlesome acuti, an important asset in this and similar roles. Its lower octave was so lean as to approach the skeletal—not unsupported, but one-dimensional, almost a male equivalent of Lise Davidsen’s setup. We heard it, but it hadn’t much of import or aesthetic quality to offer; everything seemed geared to those effective high notes, for which he took a step or two downstage and planted himself in best old provincial style. Tenor Time.

Elizabeth DeShong was a first-class Suzuki, her singing firm and full-bodied and her acting consistently engaged, emotion present but contained. As he had with the part of de Seriex in last season’s Fedora, Lucas Meacham brought a sizable, roomy baritone to his Sharpless. He too, however, did little to inflect his music, so that in the absence of behavioral specificity, there was nothing beyond the first impression of a good sound to bring his character to life. The important secondary role of Goro was taken by Tony Stevenson, who has often been a welcome presence in supporting parts. This one lies low, though, and although he executed everything with his accustomed competence, there was not enough of the above-mentioned Italian inflectional specificity to make it vivid.

I’ll be writing at greater length in a forthcoming piece on this subject of acting for the eye vs. acting for the ear, but one moment in the Butterfly/Sharpless scene can serve as an example. Cio-Cio-San, in addition to all her other accomplishments as a geisha, had by age 15 learned enough English to conduct conversations, though not at a fully idiomatic level. (When she tells Pinkerton in Act 1 that he says things she doesn’t comprehend, it doesn’t mean she can’t understand the words.) Now, in Act 2, when she asks Sharpless when robins nest in America (the promised time of Pinkerton’s return) and he answers that he’s sorry, but he hasn’t studied ornithology, she encounters a vocabulary problem. “Orni-?” she asks. “-to-lo-gi-a,” he replies. The setting on the page is plain: her two syllables are given sixteenth notes on the F# above middle C (the upper edge of the passaggio—Puccini expected any soprano to have the required strength in this area, and Cio-Cio-San’s creatrix, Rosina Storchio, certainly did); then Sharpless picks up her F#, an octave down, for “-to-lo” and rises to the middle B for “gi-a.” Unremarkable as the exchange is, it’s not present for no reason. Even if we are truly making our first discovery of Madama Butterfly, and unless we’ve paid no attention at all, we sense that Sharpless is on a freighted mission. He’d huffed and puffed his way up the hill to attend his compatriot Pinkerton’s wedding here some three years ago, but he hasn’t been here since—he is sympathetic to Butterfly, but as the American consul, he doesn’t casually drop by, and amid the delays caused by Cio-Cio-San’s insistence on little politenesses and Sharpless’s frustrations, it’s clear that something’s in the offing. The “ornitologia” exchange is entirely in the clear, unaccompanied and a piacere, and thereby highlighted, a conversation-pausing microevent. Could it be conveyed entirely by physical behavior? Certainly, though the anglings of the head and leanings forward would need sharp definition to register in an opera house. But this is an opera. Voices are supposed to interpret. In the past, sopranos usually put a rising inflection on “Or-ni-?“, with whatever measures of charm they could summon (yes, these could sometimes veer into comic cuteness), and the baritone would outline the syllables of “-to-lo-gi-a” as if they were marked stentato, to be sure we received the moment by ear. Grigorian gave us two flat, weak syllables, avoiding cuteness but substituting complete neutrality, and Meacham replied in kind, though more audibly. A “small” moment that didn’t happen, standing in for many.