Rimrock Opera Performances -- Madama Butterfly

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Story:
'Madama Butterfly'

Eilana Lappalainen says it feels good to become someone else, even if it's a 15-year-old girl smitten with a cad.

In this case, the teenager girl is Cio-Cio San (Madama Butterfly), a character in the famous Giacomo Puccini opera who vocalizes her sorrow in some of the most beautiful music ever performed. As tragedies go, this one is fairly simple. An American Naval officer, Capt. Pinkerton, falls for Butterfly, not out of love, but out of lust and conquest. Infatuated with the young geisha, attracted by her naiveté as well as her beauty, he sets out to win her. "I must pursue her even though I damage her wings," is his philosophy of courtship.

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CAST

Cio-Cio San Eilana Lappalainen
Suzuki Laura Twelves
Pinkerton Christopher Bengochea
Sharpless Jan Michael Kliewer
Goro Gennard Lombardozzi
The Bonze Dennis Rupp
Yamadori Bret Weston
Kate Pinkerton Ashley Miller

Conductor Antonio Quartuccio
Stage Dir/Producer Douglas Nagel
Chorus Master/SM Amy Logan
Piano Doug Han
Sets/Costumes Cedar Rapids Opera Theater
Orchestra Rimrock Opera Orchestra

Story:

Performances give 'Butterfly' flight

A tiny American flag stuffed into a pot of traditional Japanese cherry blossoms epitomizes the clash of two cultures in Rimrock Opera Company's production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly."

That basic conflict exists in every aspect of this story of two lovers, in their ideas about love, marriage, religion, family, and ultimately death. In the opening night performance Friday at the Alberta Bair Theater, leads Christopher Bengochea as Lt. Pinkerton and Eilana Lappalainen as Madama Butterfly spun Puccini's brilliant score into the ultimate conflict - using gorgeous music to weave such an ugly tale. A crowd of 950 took in the first of two presentations of the classic opera.

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