A natural performer as a child, Alyson Cambridge mimicked the singing she heard on the radio. “When I was 12 years old, I was doing an impression of an opera singer and a neighbor said, ‘You should take lessons.’ But for a long time I couldn’t honestly imagine myself as an opera singer!” she recalls. Even after Cambridge started (and stuck to) those lessons, it wasn’t until senior year in college when she decided that a serious musical career was the direction for her life.
It’s a long leap from a child mimicking a broadcast from the Met to embodying the most challenging role in the operatic repertoire, Cio-Cio-San from Madama Butterfly. Cambridge will take center stage at Uihlein Hall this month, clad in geisha robes for the Florentine Opera Company’s production of Madama Butterfly. A rising star in the opera universe, Cambridge has also become known for bringing operatic training into American musical theater through her role as Julie in Show Boat and has sung jazz and pop. She is a familiar face for Milwaukee opera lovers. Cambridge played Mimi in the Florentine’s 2014 La Bohème, a beautifully executed but relatively easy assignment compared with Cio-Cio-San.
“It’s a dream role. I never thought it would come this soon,” Cambridge says, commenting on the tendency among opera singers to save Cio-Cio-San until they have amassed many decades of experience. Madama Butterfly is a leviathan among operas. Although not as lengthy as Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, the Florentine’s production will clock in at more than two and a half hours including intermission. Much of the singing falls to Cio-Cio-San and crosses the emotional spectrum as romantic ecstasy slowly descends to despair.
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Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera is one of the most compelling ever written. The story could have been a sad melodrama, but the melodic splendor of the music elevates it into classic tragedy. The marriage of Lieutenant Pinkerton, a U.S. Naval officer stationed in Japan, to Cio-Cio-San, opens the first act but already the story shifts ominously. He is sexually infatuated but tells the U.S. consul, Sharpless, of his plans to return home and marry an American wife; Cio-Cio-San is 15 years old and hopelessly in love. Her uncle curses the union, accusing Cio-Cio-San of violating her heritage, but soon, with a haunting evocation of evening fireflies, the married couple engages in one of Puccini’s most melodiously lavish love duets, the music almost too resplendent for what will follow.
Act two opens with a haunting evocation of impending uncertainty. Once past the aria “Un Bel Di,” Butterfly’s optimism remains undiminished despite marriage proposals from Japanese suitors, but the score shifts into a fatalistic harbinger of tragedy when Sharpless returns with a letter from Pinkerton. Puccini begins a series of incrementally detailed musical sequences that identifies Cio-Cio-San’s dramatic arc. The American consul is hesitant to reveal the contents of Pinkerton’s letter, which states that he will never see her again. At this point the music enters into a series of three musical tableaux. These define the uncanny musical development within which Puccini unfolds the riveting dramatic development of the haunting score while never missing a beat of melodic splendor. A sudden drumbeat introduces Cio-Cio-San’s reaction to Pinkerton’s possible abandonment. What follows is a magnificent sequence wherein she brings forth their child and in a riveting aria, startling in its intensity, envisages the inevitable decision of death.
Puccini’s score subsides into a passive remission of Cio-Cio-San’s false optimism within the lovely flower duet; the haunting entr’acte that follows hints ominously at the final denouement.
In preparation for the role, Cambridge familiarized herself with geishas and Japanese culture from the turn of the last century. “The journey as an actress appeals to me,” she says, insisting that opera is about acting as well as singing. “I’ve never been a fan of the ‘park and bark’ style of opera performance. I’m freer when I’m physically and emotionally invested in the character. It’s a difficult role vocally and emotionally. You have to pace yourself.”
Cio-Cio-San’s final reaction to Pinkerton’s rejection is of almost dead silence. One never ceases to marvel at the psychological restraint with which Puccini allows the finale to develop. It usually leaves the audience shattered.
The Florentine Opera will perform Madama Butterfly at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 16 and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct 18 at Uihlein Hall, Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, visit florentineopera.org.
