2020 Madama Butterfly 蝶々夫人 Live Watch Party July 15, 2020NEW

Live Watch Party July 15th

So what if... what if a brash American naval officer and a young Japanese girl met and fell in love? How would they communicate? (Certainly not in Italian!) In POP’s most ambitious production to date, Artistic Director Josh Shaw’s long-time dream of a bilingual Madama Butterfly comes to life at The Aratani Theatre in Little Tokyo. With a new libretto by Josh Shaw and Eiki Isomura, all Japanese roles will be sung in Japanese and all American roles will be sung in English. This is a co-production with Opera in the Heights (Houston). This production is sponsored in part by an Innovations Grant from Opera America.

Time
5:00 PM PST

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFlP8yMpZPc

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pacificoperaproject/posts/3115483945194399


Pacific Opera Project (POP) presents a watch party of their critically acclaimed production of Madama Butterfly, the first ever true-to-story bilingual production of the opera, performed in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo. POP’s first co-production, Madama Butterfly was presented with Houston’s Opera in the Heights with a new libretto written by POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Opera in the Heights Artistic Director Eiki Isomura. The production presents Puccini’s story as if it actually happened and attempts to answer the question: “How would Butterfly and Pinkerton communicate?” Isomura conducts and Josh Shaw directs.

The watch party includes interviews with Shaw and Isomura alongside moderator Andreas Kraemer, and the website will feature thematic drink recipes and local Japanese restaurant recommendations from the cast. POP has also created an Education Pack to send to music and drama teachers for use in distance learning. Throughout the stream, POP will highlight organizations fighting COVID-related racism against Japanese-Americans.

Japanese roles are sung in Japanese by Japanese-American artists and all American roles are sung in English. Every singer in the chorus is also Japanese-American, mostly composed of the South Bay Singers, lead by Chorus Master Naoko Suga. In an effort to only use Japanese-American singers for the Japanese roles, POP conducted a multi-year audition process with auditions in Houston, Los Angeles, and New York in addition to online submissions from singers in the States and Japan. Unlike most POP singable translations, this libretto remains as faithful to the Italian word-for-word meaning as possible. Sueko Oshimoto of Kimono SK costumed the production.

This production was made possible through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Opera America and was recorded at the Aratani Theatre at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles, CA. POP also assembled an Advisory Committee to aid in the process, give feedback, and advise on cultural sensitivity and performance practice.