Our movie this week is another invitation to come along with us to the Bregenz Festival with this year’s opera on the lake stage, Madama Butterfly.

While Catherine and a group of subscribers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are gathering in the Lake Constance area, we were able to enjoy another outstanding production on the world’s largest floating stage in Bregenz on Lake Constance. The stage scenery was designed by Michael Levin, [https://www.michaellevinestudio.com/work] who also created the set for last year’s Rigoletto. The music is performed by the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra under Enrique Mazzola [https://enriquemazzola.com].

The version chosen here is a touching 1995 rendering of the opera in a French cinema production by director Frédéric Mitterrand.

The opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini tells the tragic story of the young Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San who falls in love with an American sailor stationed in Nagasaki. While the American enjoys an exotic love affair and thoughtlessly agrees to marry the young lady according to Japanese custom, the enchanted girl believes to have found her true love. Soon, Pinkerton has to leave and returns to America, where he forgets about the affair and the child that came of it. Cio-Cio, however, keeps her faithful love and is sure Pinkerton will return to her one day. When he does, he is married to another woman. Cio-Cio-San makes provisions for her son and takes an irreversible decision.

Subscribers in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria can watch a German TV recording of the full opera production from Bregenz Festival until September 13th, 2022.

Related:

Madama Butterfly on Wikipedia.