Guide Rating -

There are watchable versions of only a few of the great operas available on DVD, and I think it's terrific that Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment is adding Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" to that short list. This DVD contains the film by Frederic Mitterrand that had its American theatrical release in 1996. The movie features a mix of Asian and Western singer-actors, elaborate sets, and location shooting in Tunisia. The opera is performed in Italian, and the DVD provides subtitles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Thai. When I watched this DVD at home recently, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Madame Butterfly" is set in Nagasaki, and in the film version the first part takes place in 1904. The title character (played and sung by Chinese soprano Ying Huang) is a Japanese teenager who is called both Butterfly and Cio-Cio-San. Butterfly marries an American naval officer named Pinkerton (played and sung by American tenor Richard Troxell) who is stationed in Nagasaki. However, Pinkerton never takes the marriage seriously, and it's not long before he returns to the United States, leaving Butterfly behind. Butterfly waits faithfully for Pinkerton to come back, and when she sings of her dream of his return in the famous aria "Un bel di," it's one of the most moving moments in all of musical drama. Unbeknownst to Pinkerton, Butterfly bears his son after he has gone away.

After three years of no communication between Pinkerton and Butterfly, he returns to Nagasaki accompanied by a woman he married in the United States. Pinkerton can't even face Butterfly, but his American wife expresses a desire to take Pinkerton and Butterfly's son back to the U.S., where she will raise him as her own. Butterfly's heart is broken by these developments, setting up the opera's tragic ending.

I found both Ying Huang and Richard Troxell to be good looking, and to my ear, they both have pleasant voices, although I admit that my knowledge of opera is limited. As a movie, "Madame Butterfly" is very pretty to look at, but I'm a little disappointed that it isn't as visually arresting as I had hoped it would be. Also, Mitterrand's sensibilities seemed to me to occasionally slightly err in making the film. For example, at one point he shows some grainy historical footage that in my opinion does not fit in stylistically with the rest of the movie. At another point, Mitterrand has Butterfly's uncle, who is a priest, appear out of the sky and deliver a curse from several feet off the ground at her wedding. I think it would have been more dramatic and less jarring to simply have the priest emerge mysteriously from the crowd and deliver the curse while standing on the ground. But these are mere quibbles, and overall I highly recommend this film.

There's really only one special feature worth mentioning on the DVD, namely the "Making-of Featurette," which is narrated in English by Ying Huang. Although this featurette is less than 12 minutes long, I really enjoyed hearing her talk about her experiences in making the movie.

Special Feature on the DVD:

• Making-of Featurette