Puccini: Madama Butterfly

Glyndebourne waited eight decades before staging Madama Butterfly, but when it finally presented Puccini's Japanese tragedy in 2016, it did so in the company's usual intelligent and perceptive style. Director Annilese Miskimmon updates the action to the postwar era, giving a new intensity to the clash of cultural values, and conductor Omer Meir Wellber digs far below the ravishing surface of Puccini's score. The result is a staging that's as beautiful as it is moving, with Joshua Guerrero as a troublingly seductive Pinkerton and Olga Busuioc, as Cio-Cio-San, giving what one critic described as "a performance of sustained dramatic intensity and vocal brilliance".