Local singing students join Opera Australia onstage to present Puccini’s great love story

Opera Australia returns to the Department of Tourism, Sport and Culture’s Araluen Arts Centre with Madama Butterfly, a stunning love story by Puccini.

Directed by one of Australia’s greatest theatrical minds, John Bell, Opera Australia brings their national tour to Alice Springs, complete with beautiful costumes and sets.

Madama Butterfly is a love story that reaches across cultures, across oceans, across time. U.S. Naval officer B.F. Pinkerton decides to take a wife whilst stationed in Japan when the gorgeous geisha Butterfly arrives. She falls hopelessly in love with him, and a passionate marriage begins.

Years later, Pinkerton has returned home to the States. Abandoned by her family, Butterfly waits faithfully for him to return. Dawn breaks on a ship in the harbor and she waits to see if her husband has finally come back to her.

Puccini's popular opera inspired the musical Miss Saigon. It is filled with gorgeous music, from the lovers' first rapturous embrace to the intense finale. It features the famous aria 'One Fine Day' and the Humming Chorus, along with Japanese and American musical themes.

The performance, sung in Italian with English subtitles, will be accompanied by a chamber orchestra, along with a local children’s chorus drawn from Alice Springs schools.

Students from Alice Springs Steiner School, Larapinta Primary School, Living Waters Primary School, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Ross Park Primary School, St Philip’s College and home school, have spent a number of weeks learning how to sing in Italian ahead of their performance with Opera Australia.

This is an experience that they will remember forever and provides them the opportunity to meet and rehearse with the cast prior to the performance, and then join them onstage for the performance.

The production has been hailed as a ‘dramatic and full-blooded account of Puccini’s masterpiece’ (The West Australian) and Alice Springs audiences are in for a treat as these wonderful singers bring this great tragedy to life.

Madama Butterfly by Opera Australia will be live onstage at the Araluen Arts Centre on Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 August, 7.30pm.

Image: Madama Butterfly by Opera Australia. Photo Jeff Busby.