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Weston Hurt as\u00a0Sharpless (foreground, left to right), Miho Sakoda as Cio-Cio-San and Zach Borichevsky as B.F. Pinkerton perform in dress rehearsal for Fort Worth Opera’s production of Puccini’s ‘Madama Butterfly’ at Bass Performance Hall on April 8, 2026.<\/p>\n
Forever Photography Studios\/Fort Worth Opera<\/p>\n
FORT WORTH \u2013\u2013 To say that a performance of Puccini\u2019s Madama Butterfly makes you forget the opera\u2019s unfortunate stereotypes \u2014 of both Japanese and American characters \u2014 is to pay it a great compliment.<\/p>\n
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But there it was Friday night at Bass Performance Hall, in a Fort Worth Opera staging that made the\u00a0dramatis personae unusually believable. And it built to a close that sustained emotional intensity over quite a stretch.<\/p>\n
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It had superb singers, too, although early on some were briefly, and annoyingly, amplified through speakers at the sides of the stage. Miho Sakoda\u2019s Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) managed a deft balance of girlish naivet\u00e9, true love and bitter betrayal with a soprano of apparently limitless expressivity. If she occasionally pumped out more decibels than necessary, the sound was thrilling; she was no less arresting in tender intimacies.<\/p>\n
As the love-\u2019em-and-leave-\u2019em American naval lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton, Zach Borichevsky didn\u2019t overdo the caddishness. As the impact of Pinkerton\u2019s perfidy sank in, he seemed genuinely miserable. Borichevsky supplied as fine a tenor, of lyric beauty, yet capable of enormous power, as I remember hearing in the role. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Weston Hurt might have given the American consul Sharpless a bit more vocal oomph, but his well-upholstered baritone and awkward dignity were just right. As Cio-Cio-San\u2019s maid Suzuki, Kayla Nanto was less matronly of presence and voice than some. But she filled the role efficiently, her bright-ish mezzo-soprano dipping seamlessly into well-formed chest voice.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Corey Trahan was aptly reptilian as the marriage broker Goro, with an aptly acidic tenor. Kevin Thompson was physically and vocally imposing as the curse-flinging Bonze. Joseph Park\u2019s handsome baritone effectively spanned the demands of Cio-Cio-San\u2019s ill-starred suitor Prince Yamadori and the Imperial Commissioner. The role of Pinkerton\u2019s new American wife, Kate, is a slight one, but it needs more vocal substance than Madeline Coffey supplied.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n That the characters were so credibly personified evinced thoughtful work by stage director Frances Rabalais, although I wasn\u2019t convinced by Cio-Cio-San\u2019s apparent dream of Pinkerton\u2019s return during the Act 2 interlude.\u00a0<\/p>\n The set, designed by John Gunter for LA Opera, supplied the expected sliding-panel home, with a rather rugged framework. The background shorescape, with clouds, was quite beautiful, but what looked like wadded-up tissues on the floor were almost comically inadequate \u201cflowers.\u201d\u00a0 One of the stars of the show was the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, which played fabulously from start to finish, if occasionally too loudly for singers. (It didn\u2019t help that the set had no solid walls to help project upstage voices.)\u00a0<\/p>\n For all his bobbing and flailing, and sensitive shaping of the music, conductor Christian Capocaccia evinced little attention to singers. There were too many times when voices and orchestra weren\u2019t together \u2014 even in Cio-Cio-San\u2019s famous \u201cUn bel di.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n After a slightly sluggish start, the chorus, prepared by Rick Novak, supplied singing alternately sonorous and atmospheric, as needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n Repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce streets, Fort Worth. $30 to $250. 817-731-0726, fwopera.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Weston Hurt as\u00a0Sharpless (foreground, left to right), Miho Sakoda as Cio-Cio-San and Zach Borichevsky as B.F. Pinkerton perform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,93542,88643],"class_list":{"0":"post-245279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","10":"tag-fort-worth-news","11":"tag-tp-performing-arts","12":"tag-tp-fort-worth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Costumes by Alice Bristow were appropriately turn-of-the-20th-century, with vividly colored kimonos for the chorus women. Lighting was nicely handled by Jamie Milligan.<\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775016909_917_rawImage.jpg\" "\\"#\\"")
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