Shanghai Grand Theatre is celebrating the opening of its 2024/25 performing season on Friday with the premiere of the Italian opera Madama Butterfly in China, a joint production of Shanghai Opera House and the Royal Opera of the United Kingdom.

Three performances of the Puccini opera will take place at Shanghai Grand Theatre on Friday, Saturday as well as a matinee on Sunday.

The year 2024 marks the death centenary of Italian musician Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), as well as the 120th anniversary of the premiere at La Scala in Milan of Madama Butterfly, which remains one of the most beloved opera creations of the composer.

Conducted by Xu Zhong, director of Shanghai Opera House, Madama Butterfly will be starring an international cast, with sopranos Federica Vitali and Song Qian playing the title role of Cio-Cio-San and tenors Jorge de Leon and Guo Zizhao playing the leading male role of Pinkerton.

Mezzo-sopranos Annunziata Vestri and Wang Xiaoxi will play Suzuki, the maid and confidante of the heroine, and baritone Christian Federici will play Sharpless, the American consul at Nagasaki.

All the other supporting roles will be performed by artists of the Shanghai Opera House, alongside the chorus and orchestra of the company.

This production marks the third collaboration among Shanghai Opera House, the Royal Opera and Shanghai Grand Theatre, following the successes of La Traviata in 1999 and Manon Lescaut in 2014.

In October, Zhang Xiaoding, general manager of Shanghai Grand Theatre, and Xu flew to London and met Cormac Simms, administrative director of the Royal Opera, when the three sides discussed the detailed plan for a co-production of the opera.

"From our preliminary discussions two years ago, to the busy preparations from last October, till the rehearsals in the scorching heat of Shanghai summer in the past few weeks, we are finally making a dream come true. I believe this modern and simple-styled opera production will find wide resonance in Shanghai," Zhang said at the new conference for the show on Monday.

Madama Butterfly is very popular with Chinese opera audiences. A number of Chinese vocal artists have achieved international success singing the leading character Cio-Cio-San, such as He Hui, Huang Ying and Zhang Liping.

Nearly 90 percent of tickets for the upcoming performances at Shanghai Grand Theatre were sold off a week before the premiere, she says.

In 1900, Puccini saw the one-act play Madama Butterfly by American producer David Belasco, based on a short story by John Luther Long. He was profoundly touched by the story of a Japanese girl's ill-fated love for an American sailor, and obtained the operatic rights to create a new opera production with lyricists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica.

After several revisions following its premiere in 1904, the opera reached its definitive form, and even today, Cio-Cio-San's aria imagining the return of her husband Pinkerton, Un Bel di, Vedremo, remains one of the best-known arias in the soprano repertoire.

Since Madama Butterfly premiered in Covent Garden in 1905, the Royal Opera has made many productions of the opera, featuring diverse styles and designs. The current production was created in 2003, directed by Moshe Leiser from Belgium and Patrice Caurier from France. The choreography and make-up design were adjusted to be more historically realistic, and simpler stage design was adopted, following the trend in the Western opera scene through the past decades.

The Royal Opera has made co-productions with many other companies around the world, but this time things are a little different, according to Simms.

"We have invented a new co-production model in Shanghai," he says. The replica of the set and costumes are made here and stay in China, while the other version stays in London.

"This means we can share productions without the difficulty of transporting them to-and-from Europe continuously … We would like to stage this production many times in the future and in many other cities of China."

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