MADAMA BUTTERFY
Premiere 22 May 2022 \ Oper Frankfurt \ opera by Puccini \ director R.B. Schlather \ conductor Antonello Manacorda \ set Johannes Leiacker \ costume Doey Lüthi \ light Olaf Winter \ dramaturge Konrad Kuhn \ assistant Alan Barnes, Aileen Schneider \ photographs Barbara Aumüller
“An enchantingly deadly serious and in every respect slim "Madama Butterfly" in Frankfurt.”
— Frankfurter Rundschau, May 2022
“Schlather's reduction acts as a subtle intensification… Never before seen so keenly that this story is not primarily a love story… Now Schlather's leadership and Manacorda's grandiosely slender, taut conducting leave no doubt about the depth of the drama and the power of the musical and dramaturgical subtext.”
— Frankfurter Rundschau, May 2022
“The director R.B. Schlather, who, like the character of Pinkerton, is from the United States, has the play at the Frankfurt Opera brought effortlessly from the 1900's to our present day, where sex tourism has become an industry. While the service providers in the house rental and catering sectors wear black and white liveries, Pinkerton turns up informally in a shirt and shorts from the fast-fashion discount store in western shopping malls. The costume designer Doey Lüthi has already said a lot: Even when it comes to clothing, Pinkerton is primarily concerned with the rapid consumption of disposable goods. Women belong to it… Johannes Leiacker built a stage abstractly reminiscent of Japan: Two sliding walls with a square view, revealing, hiding, uniting and separating the figures. Otherwise there is extreme sparseness, which allows for the strictest concentration on the characters… The direction, which shows neither the conception of children in the first act, nor the suicide in the last act, but outsources everything drastic to the viewer's imagination, is great in its discretion and in its trust in the music, which is in the best hands with Manacorda.”
— FAZ, May 2022
