Michael Grandage in His Own Words

Dramaturg Colin Ure speaks with the director about HGO’s new production of Madame Butterfly

Michael Grandage is one of the most respected of Britain’s younger theater directors. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse in London, a small, intimate venue in the heart of the city’s theater district which presents some of the country’s most exciting and inspiring work, and attracts many of today’s most exceptional actors and directors.

Grandage’s highly acclaimed work has also been seen on this side of the pond. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his Broadway production of Frost / Nixon, capitalizing on his success with a production of Hamlet, with Jude Law in the title role. Earlier this year his production of John Logan’s play, Red, about the artist Mark Rothko, won a total of six coveted Tony Awards. He will return to Broadway in 2012 to direct a new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, Evita.

As a successful director of some of the most iconic plays and musicals, it was only a matter of time until he turned his prodigious talent to the world of opera. Last summer he scored another triumph when he directed his first operatic production, Benjamin Britten’s searing masterpiece Billy Budd at Glyndebourne. Grandage is the first to admit that it took him many years to reach this point. HGO’s General Director Anthony Freud, and Glyndbourne’s General Director David Pickard prepared him well in advance. “Anthony and David spent about seven years guiding me,” he said, “so I wouldn’t be fazed by elements of opera that I might find slightly freakish.”

Madame Butterfly is one of the best-loved operas ever composed. So how does a director find a balance between meeting the audience’s anticipation and expectations, and persuade them to see and hear the opera with fresh eyes and ears? Grandage believes that even though the majority of the audience will know the opera, some are coming to the opera house, and the performance, for the first time. Grandage believes he has a responsibility as a director to these newcomers: whether he is directing Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber, or Puccini, he must present a narrative that is creative, dynamic and exciting.

Although Grandage accepts that opera singers have more to contend with in a performance than actors, his directorial technique will remain the same for both. He explained, “Directing an actor is about finding the correct emotional and intellectual response from them on any word, or line. It’s exactly the same with a singer. They should be able to respond to a series of questions which are basic to every performance. Where is the singer’s character emotionally and intellectually? What are their intentions? Where are they going to, and coming from? How is this made to work?” It is vital to Grandage that there be contact between the audience in the auditorium and the performers on the stage, that the audience interacts emotionally rather than being passive observers.

So how will Grandage approach this iconic opera? His starting point is to create a Japanese reality on stage, even if this reality is not a true representation of Japan. After all, any true sense of Japanese reality is stretched beyond belief due to the fact that all of the characters perform in Italian: “The most significant aspect I want to present is the creation of a society into which characters from a different society appear, and whether these characters relate to each other in a positive or negative way.” He believes that Westerners are fascinated by the ritual inherent in Japanese society, and presenting this ritual will be a fundamental element in his production.

Although Puccini composed some of his most beautiful tenor music for the role of Pinkerton, it is an undeniable fact that he is not a likeable character. In Puccini’s original version of the opera, Pinkerton showed no remorse for his actions, it is only in the revised version performed today that Pinkerton expresses feelings of guilt and shame. Is Pinkerton purely a victimizer? Grandage believes that this view is far too simplistic, just as Butterfly’s tragedy is caused by more than just her apparent gullibility. He explained, “What I will enjoy about directing this opera is that I will give everybody a case for the defense. I want to present as many layers to a character as possible, and to achieve this, I will invite the actor in the singer to explore his character in great depth.” For Grandage this is one of the joys of being a director in the twenty-first century, and his definition of high drama is that through direction and a clear narrative, an audience’s perception of a character can change from moment to moment. Grandage wants to engage the audience to the extent that they are virtually sitting on the edge of their seats, believing that they can change the circumstances. Grandage continues, “In Madame Butterfly there is a point in the drama where you think everyone can be saved, and therein lies the tragedy.”

The set and costume designer for Madame Butterfly is Christopher Oram (Tony Award winner for Red), who collaborates regularly with Michael Grandage. The beautiful sets and costumes, inspired by Japanese drawings, create a visual sense of Japan during the first decade of the twentieth century, the time in which the story takes place. Grandage and Oram have tried to create an environment that is not cluttered with visual naturalism. “The more you shoe-horn a production,” says Grandage, “the more options you close down in the audience’s imagination. Even in defining Butterfly’s house, we have tried to make it as simple as possible, allowing it to do what it needs to do at its most basic level.” Grandage and Oram are adamant that their designs allow for direct communication between the performers and the audience—an open space is the central theme.

I asked Michael Grandage why he thought Madame Butterfly broke our hearts: “I think Puccini was a skilled craftsman who understood the human condition in a very mature way, and created works of art which played with our emotions to a heightened sense.” Puccini and Britten are undoubtedly the towering operatic giants of twentieth-century opera, providing us with some of the greatest operatic music ever written, with their innate theatricality, and real flesh-and-blood characters that demand to be taken seriously. It is no coincidence that HGO has been presenting Puccini and Britten masterpieces in repertory together, and inviting some of today’s finest theater directors to create them here in Houston.