Pale flesh bursts out of tangled red rope as prostrate businessmen writhe and reach for bodies suspended above the stage, veins of incandescent rope spiderwebbing across the walls. Cio-Cio-San descends from the ceiling, suspended by – trapped at the centre of – ropes that reach out like the wings of a butterfly. It’s clear from the opening bars of Puccini’s score that this production of Madama Butterfly by choreographer and director Graeme Murphy won’t be anything like Moffatt Oxenbould’s traditional Butterfly, which Opera Australia retired two years ago.

Opera Australia’s Madama Butterfly. Photo © Prudence Upton

Giacomo Puccini’s opera, which premiered in 1904 with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, was based on an 1898 short story by American author John Luther Long, Madame Butterfly, which was in turn based on the 1887 French novel Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti, and it tells the story of an American naval officer who takes a Japanese bride in Nagasaki only to ditch her for a ‘real American wife’ back home. With a score full of ‘Japanese’ influences – pentatonic scales and percussion colouring Puccini’s melodies – the opera depicts...