“It’s a tricky piece,” said David Lefkowich, the stage director of this weekend’s operatic finale of the Grand Teton Music Festival’s 62nd season. “The music is incredible, but the themes are difficult in a modern-day setting.”
An Italian composer, an American playwright, a Japanese story: “How do we reframe this, keep this incredible story and music and not lose the beauty, but also fit it into now, so that we have characters, not caricatures, who are not lacking in depth?”
“Madame Butterfly” is Lefkowich’s third collaboration with the Grand Teton Music Festival. He worked with Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles for years at the San Francisco Opera and in 2018 was invited to stage the festival’s concert version of “West Side Story,” with some costumes and theatrical lighting and a bit of choreography. Last year he and the festival stepped it up a notch with a production of “La Bohème” adding projections to serve as the work’s Parisian setting.
“‘La Bohème’ was an utter leap of faith,” Runnicles said earlier this summer. “We didn’t really know how it would work or how the audience would respond. … but it exceeded our wildest expectations.”
“Butterfly” makes sense as the follow up, he said.
“I know in the valley there’s great buzz about it,” he said. “Last year, many people who attended the festival for first time came to see ‘La Bohéme,’ and a lot of young people.”
Walk Festival Hall wasn’t built for opera. It doesn’t have much of a backstage space or room to fly sets in and out, Lefkowich said.
“So how to you create grand opera?” he asked. “Projections are the best way — we can transport the audience wherever we want them to do.”
Lefkowich and crew will use artwork by two Japanese American artists, Chiura Obata and Kathy Fujii-Oka, to transport audiences (see box). The production borrows props and costumes from the Utah Opera, assembles members of the Grand Teton Music Festival Chorus, a group created by Runnicles some years ago and led by Barlow Bradford. And, of course, a 70-strong Grand Teton Festival Orchestra.
“Usually the orchestra is down in the pit,” Lefkowich said, but Walk Hall has no pit. The action will take place downstage from the orchestra, meaning Runnicles will have to conduct with his singers behind him.
