Madam Butterfly in Trafalgar Square

On the evening of Monday 4th July I went to Trafalgar Square to watch the BP open air screening of the Royal Opera House's performance of Madam Butterfly.  Arriving at 6 o'clock, the square was packed, with groups of people staking their claim on the best floor space.   My friend and I weaved our way through the groups before we came to a place where we could stop.   At 7pm there was a National Hum-Along where a group of singers taught us a part from the opera, which we were then encouraged to hum along to.  As we watched the workshop, we learnt that it was also being broadcast to a whole host of locations in the United Kingdom.   At 7.30pm the opera burst onto the screen, with the incredibly handsome James Valenti playing the part of B.F. Pinkerton, with his dark, brooding good looks and his stunning voice: he made the perfect character we love-to-hate.   Following closely behind him was Kristine Opolais as the madly in love Cio-Cio-San, or Madam Butterfly, swathed in a Japanese Geisha costume complete with white face and black painted-on eyebrows.   She played the heroine to perfection: with her voice on top form.   There were helpful sub-titles, so that us non-Italian speakers could understand the words, but I felt myself zoning out of reading them, as I was enjoying the enchanting music, and action on screen, which more than made up for the fact that the words didn't mean much to me.   Amazingly there were seven and a half thousand people in the square, and at the end, when Butterfly killed herself next to her blindfolded son, you could have heard a pin drop.   When it came to the curtain call, the whole crowd gave a standing ovation.  It felt just as if we were in the Opera House, except slightly better due to the high definition screen that really zoomed close into the action.   I found it immensly encouraging to see that amount of people come out to watch two and a half hours of opera on a Monday evening in a square in London: it certainly is not a lost art form, which I am very pleased about.