As everyone now knows, the most interesting thing about operas is not the notes and words Gluck or Rameau or Tuttifrutti went to the trouble of writing down, but what the sainted director “brings” – always with much reference to him (usually) self. Thus latterly we had a delightful piece in the Guardian from the director of the current Eugene Onegin at Covent Garden wherein Ted Huffman took us into the touching story of some bloke he met at university and how they spent their time “fucking, cuddling, laughing, confiding our secrets, sharing our favourite albums and half sleeping,” thereby clearly much increasing Ted’s appreciation of Tchaikovsky’s drama of bad choices and bad timing. I’ll review the results of that one next week.

Puccini’s happily exotic take on Japan is a bit embarrassing for the bureaucrats of international opera

And so the Flanders Opera – for the last decade at least one of Europe’s best and pleasantest companies – centred its new production of Madama Butterfly around the experiences of director Maiko Nakamura, hitherto a purveyor of classy “authentic” productions with all the correct kinds of shuffling and bowing, but who has now had an epiphanic moment where she realised the depth of Butterfly’s colonialist condescension, and now sees it as a drama of identity. This information is all conveyed by projected text that descends during the boring bits of the opera. (There are, by the way, no boring bits in Butterfly.)

Thus we learned all about Maiko’s sad story – grandparents killed by villainous Americans, her own unhappy history of directing, her sudden terrible realisation that the opera is full of what you might call late-19th-century attitudes, her growing convictions about Cio-Cio-San’s assertion of agency, her desire to use this Flanders show to display her new insights. Most importantly, she definitely felt that her life mirrored Butterfly’s in important ways (trying to become foreign, losing a parent to suicide etc).

Grippingly, Maiko had a bit of a crisis during the rehearsals, vanished for a week, came back, broke down completely – and killed herself during the dress rehearsal. All very sad, of course, though I reckon the management might have seen trouble looming. The other thing is – none of this is true. Maiko was an invention of the actual director, the Argentinian Mariano Pensotti, who had no doubt been requested to do a non-Japanese staging, as is now the rage. You can see why, of course. Butterfly is very good and very popular, so you really have to put it on, but Puccini’s happily exotic take on Japan is a bit embarrassing for the bureaucrats of international opera, most of whom are bears of very little brain. I suppose they hope that once you remove Japan and so on, other things will be revealed. 

I’m not convinced that Pensotti’s way was all that helpful. For a start, it felt rather a cheap, exploitative trick to play on audience sensibilities – on top of the way the constant irruption of the Maiko story dragged you out of Puccini’s very well-constructed (and emotionally manipulative) tear-jerker, with disappointing results for those who like to shed a quiet tear for poor little Cio-Cio-San, a delicate porcelain toy assiduously smashed to bits by the ghastly bullocking American ephebophile Pinkerton.

And what about this identity lark? A lot was made of reflections, the fascination with The Other, the attempt to become that thing. For sure, Butterfly goes the whole hog – becoming Mrs B.F. Pinkerton, wearing American clothes, taking up smoking and Christianity – but Maiko’s theory (which I suppose is Pensotti’s) that she is actually using Pinkerton to effect this escape into another identity doesn’t really stack up. You can certainly wonder if that little-china-figurine act of hers isn’t a bit on the large side. On the other hand, she is only 15. Butterfly is not a halfwit, quails at the demeaning horror of returning to geisha-dom, understands a fair amount about men, but there is nothing manipulative about her falling for Pinkerton. I didn’t buy it.

It’s a pity because in many ways this is a strong performance, and without the Maiko guff this would have been a very decent staging. Pensotti, as asked, had subtracted any obvious japonaiserie, which hardly matters, and concentrated completely on the personal drama, performed on a pleasantly stark stage designed by Mariana Tirantte. Puccini’s score will do the rest for you: its brilliant transitions from ceremony to aching intimacy, the sheer gorgeousness of orchestra and vocal lines, certain musical phrases of Butterfly’s that would wrench ecstatic sympathy out of a dead man. The conversations of Butterfly – between her a her maid Suzuki, between Pinkerton and the consul Sharpless, Sharpless and Butterfly – are not melodramatic but simply honest and human, and were staged with a marvellous simplicity that let characters speak. 

And it is very well sung and played, conductor Daniela Candillari understanding the pacing, the phrasing, the ebb and flow of the score beautifully, knowing when to indulge those frisson-inducing slurs and rubatos, when to play it cool. The Irish soprano Celine Byrne is thoroughly good, affecting, full of the growing strength that bursts out so stunningly when she produces the surprise baby for Pinkerton’s inspection – and pursues her path to death with honour without a trace of childishness or self-pity. Ovidiu Purcel was the forthright Pinkerton, a chap who is dreadful in very ordinary ways, and Vincenzo Neri was the ideal Sharpless, conflicted, sad, helpless to stop the tragedy he can see all along. It’s worth catching a Butterfly this beautifully performed, even if some of the ideas are a bit rubbish.

This show is currently playing at the nicely grand, if bijou, Opera in Ghent – the intelligent person’s Bruges – from October 4th to 16th.