Star soprano Ailyn Pérez returns to the Met this January as Cio-Cio-San, the devoted, deserted heroine of Madama Butterfly. Having already triumphed as Puccini’s ill-fated geisha in Barcelona, Madrid, and Naples, Pérez is ready to share her deeply personal take on the touchstone role with Met audience.

For the better part of two decades, Anthony Minghella’s now-classic staging of Madama Butterfly has been enchanting audiences—and breaking their hearts—with its elegant and evocative setting of Puccini’s devastating tragedy. When the production returns January 9–March 28, it will have a new face in its starring role: soprano Ailyn Pérez, who appears as Cio-Cio-San, the young Japanese geisha whose misplaced faith in a visiting American sailor spells her undoing. In recent years, few artists have delivered more melting portrayals than the Chicago native, earning plaudits from The New York Times for her “radiant sound—sometimes seeming angelic, sometimes fiery.” She will need both qualities—and the full spectrum in between—for Cio-Cio-San, a role she describes as “a woman of immense strength, guided by love, by faith, and by the music that carries her toward her fate.”

Pérez is no stranger to the operas of Puccini, having starred as both Mimì and Musetta in La Bohème at the Met and wowed audiences worldwide with her portrayals in Tosca, Turandot, and La Rondine. But for her, none of the composer’s characters match the rigors and rewards of Butterfly. 

“Cio-Cio-San is one of the most profound roles I sing because she is not defined by tragedy but by love—especially for her son. She creates her own new world and sacrifices everything to ensure her child’s life continues with dignity.”

Alongside her, Pérez will have the support of a cast of recent Met standouts. Following heroic appearances in Tosca and Turandot, Korean tenor SeokJong Baek takes on the callous Lieutenant Pinkerton, while Czech baritone Andrzej Filończyk—following his breakout debut earlier this season in Mason Bates’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay—is the American consul Sharpless. Maestro Marco Armiliato, whom Pérez lovingly calls “the dream conductor,” leads Puccini’s tear-jerking score.

Pérez is one of three superstar sopranos headlining Madama Butterfly for the first time at the Met this season, with Sonya Yoncheva and Elena Stikhina trading off as Cio-Cio-San in March. “The journey she takes over the course of the opera feels like a pilgrimage,” Pérez says, “and performing this journey in Anthony Minghella’s poetic, ritualistic production is an extraordinary honor.”

Visit MetOpera.org.

close gallery

0 of

Photos: Madama Butterfly at The Met Opera

Next Slide  

You may also like

• 
  Photos: Carmen at The Met Opera
• 
  Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and More Creative PLAYBILLDER Covers
• 
  Photos: Going Bacharach: The Songs of an Icon Off-Broadway