Word: madama
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...talents of its principals. Irons makes the most of his two-dimensional character, and Lone ("The Last Emperor") manages to make clear Song's contempt for the fantasies he caters to. One of the film's few decent moments is Song's explication of the appeal of Puccini's Madama Butterfly: would the opera seem so romantic, she asks, if the races of the protagonists were reversed? Would Westerners swoon to see a blond cheerleader kill herself over a doomed love affair with a Japanese businessman...
...diplomat. Jeremy Irons tries manfully, and John Lone womanfully, to give real life to the characters, but the close-ups defeat them. So do some unlikely plot points: the defendant and his accuser are put alone to undress and wrestle in a police wagon; the diplomat daubs himself as Madama Butterfly before a rapt audience -- of French convicts! Cronenberg is unlikely to find other spectators as gullible as they...
...diplomat. Jeremy Irons tries manfully, and John Lone womanfully, to give real life to the characters, but the close-ups defeat them. So do some unlikely plot points: the defendant and his accuser are put alone to undress and wrestle in a police wagon; the diplomat daubs himself as Madama Butterfly before a rapt audience -- of French convicts! Cronenberg is unlikely to find other spectators as gullible as they...
...conventionally happy ending can come of this Madama Butterfly for the '90s. Still, renunciation has its own rewards. By the time of their parting, Sachiko has assumed a Western assertiveness, and neither she nor her marriage will ever be the same. As for Iyer, the detached observer has finally succumbed to love -- in typically Zen manner: "By now it was so much a part of my life that I had not even seen it until it was gone...
Soprano Mirella Freni, 56, will not sing Madama Butterfly onstage. The part is so heavily emotional that she feels it could upset the vocal balance she has spent a lifetime achieving. Luciano Pavarotti has just won acclaim for his first Otello, and most musical experts think he was right to wait until age 55 to try the heroic role. The list of parts that tenor Alfredo Kraus, 63, will not touch reads almost like a chart of opera's greatest hits, including Cavaradossi in Tosca and Rodolfo in La Boheme. Kraus sticks strictly to lighter parts that do not strain...