Role Reversal after Puccini

The UK Premiere of Huang Ruo's M. Butterfly; a so-so revival of ENO's classic Rigoletto

Powerful singing: Mark Stone commits harakiri as René Gallimard in M.Butterfly Picture © Mark Allan

David Henry Hwang’s 1988 play M. Butterfly, a long-running success on Broadway, explores attitudes to gender, racism and imperialism through the real-life story of a French diplomat who was seduced by a male transvestite of the Peking Opera. The transvestite, posing as a woman, turned out to be a spy for the Chinese government, using his 20-year relationship with the diplomat to glean state secrets.

Hwang later collaborated with the Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo to create an opera based on the play, premiered at Santa Fe in 2014. The production starred British baritone Mark Stone as René Gallimard (an alias for the real-life diplomat Bernard Borsicot, who was imprisoned for treason) and Korean-American male alto Kangmin Justin Kim as Song Liling (Hwang’s name for Shi Pei Pu, his Chinese lover). The same singers appeared in the opera’s UK premiere, given in a semi-staging at the Barbican Centre by Kimberley Prescott, using costumes (James Schuette) and elements of the set design (Allen Moyer) from Santa Fe. It was hard to believe that the elaborate furnishings and props were shipped across the Atlantic for a one-night stand - a collaboration between the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Barbican Hall - but it all looked authentic enough.