Halloween at the Opera

I'm in Toronto for work this week and like last May, am extending my stay for the weekend. Checked out of fancy schmancy hotel, checked in to old but clean hostel in sort of sketchy old area, had a wonderful dinner at one of my new favourite restos, bannock on Queen across from the old city hall building and tucked in next to The Bay building. Then headed to Four Seasons Centre for the last night of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Of course it wouldn't be a proper Halloween Night performance without a giant white gorilla in a bow tie!

Mr. Le Gorilla reading his program alongside other patrons.

Wine, Woman, and Song (l'Opera) for this bow tied gorilla this Hallow's Eve.

I can report that The Canadian Opera Company did an amazing job of this classic tragedy. I bawled almost all the way through. I don't think I've seen it since I was a child so the tale of love, abandonment, betrayal of innocence and loss took on new meaning. The set was spare and elegant, all pale colours of a classic Japanese painting. This time I noted the many Japanese elements Puccini had conscientiously incorporated into the opera motifs. I never before realized how amazingly strong Butterfly was - or how young - or exactly how insurmountable were the odds she was up against.

Plot summary tainted by my current reaction to this classic tale of uncaring, self-serving lust, unrequited love, cruel abandonment and escape by death:

A bigoted American soldier weasels his way into the trust of an innocent 15 year old Japanese girl from an impoverished family, agreeing to marry her (with no intention of making the commitment permanent), knocks her up, abandons her, and marries a wealthy American woman.

Butterfly, no more than a child (she's 15 for goodness sake!) married this asshole fully committing her love and her life to him, believing he will return to her as he promised. She bears his child, and counts every minute of his absence. When the cowardly pissant finally returns his new wife in tow, he doesn't have the nuts to tell her he has married another and instead gets the American Consul to bring the news. The Consul tries to convince the heartbroken now-18-year-old to marry a rich local or give up her child to Pinkerton's blonde wife to raise (god forbid a poor woman who has been used and abandoned by a man of stature dare raise a child on her own). Butterfly fools them all by choosing a third option: death by her own hand with the same knife with which her father killed himself at his master's request. "If you cannot live with honour," she sings, "you must die with honour." Or something depressing like that.

In the end the foolish and arrogant Pinkerton feels something akin to remorse but I think it's crocodile tears. This time I came away from this story thinking, what a cowardly SOB that Pinkerton was - as were ALL the men he represents throughout the ages who ever took advantage of a woman's sincere love, treated it like a game and abandoned her for some more advantageous match.

Bottom line: never trust a man and be prepared to be independent because you can't rely on anyone but yourself. There's the tragic tale of Madama Butterfly in a nutshell. Hope to find a comedy show in Toronto tomorrow after this - amazingly well performed and beautifully rendered major sob fest!