Madame Butterfly at Glimmerglass 2026

Madame Butterfly

The Glimmerglass Festival 2026

Music, Giacomo Puccini

Libretto, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa

Performance, August 8, 2026, 7:30 PM

Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York

Conductor, Joseph Colaneri

Original Production Director, Francesca Zambello

Revival Director, Joshua Horowitz

Set Design, Michael Yeargan

Costume Design, Anita Yavich

Lighting Design, Robert Wierzel

Hair and Makeup Design, Tom Watson

Projected Titles, Kelley Rourke

Chorus Director, Katherine Kozak

Principal Coach, Anna Betka

Assistant Director, Edward Sturm

Assistant Conductor, Luke Poeppel

Second Pianist/Coach, Maeve Berry

The Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra and Chorus

Cio-Cio-San, Eri Nakamura

Lt. Pinkerton, Eric Taylor

Suzuki, Michelle Mariposa

Sharpless, Troy Cook

Goro, Randy Ho

Yamadori, Joseph Park

Bonze, Woosik Nam

Kate Pinkerton, Erin Alford

Commissioner, Yichen Xue

Registrar, Alex Smith

Sorrow, Prior Parker

Madame Butterfly at Glimmerglass 2026

Francesca Zambello’s brilliant staging of Madame Butterfly at Glimmerglass in 2014 maintained an elegance of design, eliminating extraneous clutter and concentrating on the intimacy of the drama. This year’s revival, directed by Joshua R. Horowitz, used the same minimalist design while altering enough to offer a distinctly different interpretation. Visually, the descending shōji-like screens lent the same tone and mood. One change, noticeable from the outset, was the almost exclusive use of Asian supernumeraries. Also, rather subtly, Cio-Cio-San’s age has been raised from fifteen in the 2014 production to eighteen here.  She sings “diciotto” (eighteen) instead of “quindici anni” (fifteen years), as found in the original libretto. 

Eric Taylor as Pinkerton, Eri Nakamura as Cio-Cio-San Photo: Brent DeLanoy

The tragic anticipation of dissolution, despair, and death grew with each moment of the opera. In a real way, this Madame Butterfly had a prodigious emotional impact, backed by some amazing singing.

If this evening represented a “Birth of Tragedy” of sorts, it was a bit of a nail-biter at the start, as both leads, Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton, needed time to warm up and achieve vocal stability. Everything clicked in time for the weighty events of Act II. My only other criticism is the flow of the supertitles was faulty this evening, leaving gaps that were bothersome at times.

Eri Nakamura, as Cio-Cio-San, is a standout talent. Her voice swelled from meekness and obsequiousness to grief, suffering, and volcanic despair. She filled the hall with a swell of sound that brought some audience members to tears. Tenor Eric Taylor, singing the role of Lt. Pinkerton, has the pith and might of a heldentenor and, when summoned, gives forth clarion song. Pinkerton, the opera’s bête noire, is a difficult character to reckon with in any performance. His abuse is almost insensate, and one does not feel quite right giving him a standing ovation at the end. He is a villain, perhaps a naïf of his time and youth; Sharpless’s asides amply reveal the immorality of Pinkerton’s acts.

Michelle Mariposa, as Suzuki, excelled as an actor with a warm voice perfectly suited to the ensembles throughout. Amazingly, Ms. Mariposa (her surname translates as “butterfly” in Spanish!) also sang the leading role of Dorabella in the new Così production, which taps very different vocal resources.

Troy Cook’s Sharpless sat perfectly at the balance point between culpability and sympathy. Randy Ho’s portrayal of Goro, the marriage broker, likewise succeeded in portraying obsequious servility, officiousness, and duplicity as his stock-in-trade.

I remember loving the 2014 production. I was not carried away in the same way as I was this year, but that production was purposefully more pacific. The pace of the current production was consistent with its more intense emotional outpourings.

Never underestimate the heart-rending power of gently falling blossom petals in the wake of a tragedy. It may be a tired theatrical convention, but in such a richly felt production, it worked well!