Opera Scotland

Madam Butterfly 2005Ukrainian National Opera, Odessa

Read more about the opera Madama Butterfly

By 2005, Ellen Kent's tie-in with the opera company from Chisinau, Moldova, was well-established, and they would return in the autumn. For the spring tour, however, she brought a company from another former Soviet state, the Ukraine. The important Black Sea port of Odessa was the possessor of a highly attractive opera house, dating from 1887, and with a design modelled on that of of the Vienna State Opera. Repertoire remained familiar, with this workmanlike Butterfly alternating with Traviata.

If the orchestra and chorus were new, many of the principals were familiar, and the traditional staging of Butterfly did not seem essentially different from the previous one. While the gaps between performances in three of the cities might have required only one group of soloists, the unusually long Glasgow run of six consecutive nights clearly required double or triple casting, as did the exhausting length of the whole tour (see below).

This tour opened on 28 January at the New Theatre, Wimbledon when a single Traviata was followed by two Butterflies. The visit ended with a week of performances at Brighton Theatre Royal, concluding on 11 June. A total of 44 towns and cities were visited - four in Scotland, one in Northern Ireland, two in Wales, the rest in England. A total of 86 performances of Butterfly were given, as well as 39 of the Verdi, which missed some of the venues.

Details are from the tour programme.