OLD PRODUCTION : ‘BUTTERFLY’ COMES TO COSTA MESA

“You’re going to hear music you never heard before,” promised Beverly Sills a year ago at a Costa Mesa press conference.

The head of the New York City Opera was discussing the production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” to be exported to the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“I’m not bringing the regular version that you normally hear. We’re going back to the critical version . . . . What you’re going to see is a ‘Butterfly’ that has not been seen on the West Coast or any place in this country. . . . “

So much for campaign promises.

The “Madama Butterfly” that opened at Segerstrom Hall Wednesday night looked and sounded exactly like the “Madama Butterfly” that the same company has been mustering where ‘ere it plays since 1966.

Los Angeles first encountered it at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion 20 years ago--with an obscure young tenor named Placido Domingo dominating the proceedings as Lt. Pinkerton.

What seemed strikingly unorthodox about the production then seems only mildly unorthodox now, and the novel ideas have nothing to do with the musical edition. This remains an essentially conventional “Butterfly,” even though the stage director, Frank Corsaro, has embellished the action with a few modest flights of fancy.

Pinkerton shows up for his casual wedding in company with some ugly-American Navy buddies, who swill booze and act like rowdies. The fragile heroine dons an American-style dress when her husband returns to the States. Sweet Suzuki smokes a pipe. Otherwise, it is “Butterfly” business as usual.

If the company really had entertained plans to reinstate 12 minutes of music from the original version, to delete the famous tenor aria (which was a compositional afterthought) and to play the second and third acts as one, those plans apparently were abandoned before tour time. Since Los Angeles encountered a reasonable facsimile of Puccini’s original design when the Music Center Opera staged its “Butterfly” in September, the loss is eminently bearable.

For better or worse, the operatic nomads from Lincoln Center are still faithful to Puccini in their long-accustomed fashion.

The flimsy, painterly sets of Lloyd Evans have faded a bit. Corsaro’s staging scheme, as enforced by Christian Smith, has gotten a bit fuzzy in detail. Some of the scenic effects have become illogical rituals (the bizarre rain of New York’s Nagasaki falls on Cio-Cio-San’s window but not the surrounding landscape).

Nevertheless, the City Opera proved long ago that it knows how to make the most of Puccini’s virtually foolproof tear-jerker, even under routine conditions. Some things don’t change.

The crucial title role fell on this occasion to Catherine Lamy. Local audiences may remember her as Mimi in the forgettable “La Boheme” presented by the Los Angeles Opera Repertory Theater in 1981.

Attractive and slender, she performed the standard mock-Asian charades with grace and conviction. She conveyed the tragedy of the betrayed geisha with poignant simplicity.

She inflected the text eloquently, and sang persuasively so long as she could sing softly. When the line ascended, however, and when she applied vocal pressure, problems arose.

Although she mustered the force for a whomping climax at the moment when Butterfly sights Pinkerton’s ship, she tended to sound shrill and raspy in other forte outbursts. Wisely, no doubt, she opted against a high D-flat to cap the entrance aria.

In Richard Leech, she found a virtually ideal Pinkerton--boyish, ardent, golden-toned and, in the awkward final scene, nearly sympathetic in his woefully belated repentance.

Robert McFarland introduced a hearty, resonant, standard-brand Sharpless. Jane Shaulis sang the music of Suzuki with exceptional finesse and projected a reassuring maternal presence.

The strong supporting cast was dominated by James Billings, who returned as a gratifyingly restrained, all-knowing Goro. Young Aaron Belich struck the innocent stances of Butterfly’s son with remarkable pathos.

Christopher Keene, who the night before had placed “Carmen” in a metronomic straitjacket, brought welcome warmth and flexibility to Puccini’s lush platitudes.

The Segerstrom Hall acoustic once more startled the listener with its brightness and resonance. Spokespersons for the house and the company assured a critical skeptic that the sound was 100% natural, emphatically unamplified.

The enthusiastic audience clapped only in the right places and laughed, where appropriate, at the ever-distracting supertitles.