Madama Butterfly, performed under a grand white tent in Caboto Park... The gifted young cast – some local singers and actors, other rising stars from across North America – perform on a small thrust stage, while the audience sits on benches and folding chairs, practically at their feet – the miniature, but mighty, orchestra, under the direction of Hiroya Miura, off to the side. It’s the most intimate, up-close production of an opera I’ve even seen, a perfect way to watch Puccini’s intimate domestic tragedy unfold. Seen this close up, Cho-cho san, the young girl who falls in love with an American naval officer, seems especially human and vulnerable, and Pinkerton, her cowardly cad of a seducer, seems especially despicable. It helps, at this (non) distance, that Manami Hattori-Fallen, the Japanese-born soprano who plays Butterfly, and Jeffrey Michael Hartman, the American tenor who plays Pinkerton, can act as well as they can sing. Hartman plays Pinkerton as a venal voluptuary – you can feel the waves of drunken lust radiating from him as he strips off his 15-year-old bride’s delicate pink kimono. But it’s Hattori-Fallen’s luminous aria, Un Bel Di that electrifies the audience – with nothing to divide you from the stage, it’s as if she’s singing it just to and for you.

Mercury has staged a magical version of Madama Butterfly that works, not in spite of, but because of, its setting. That’s wonder enough. But the company’s ambitions are even larger – to make Edmontonians fall in love, not just with Butterfly and Puccini, but with the Via Italia on 95th Street. If you pay the full ticket price, you’re not just entitled to a night of great musical theatre – you get to stroll the city’s Italian district, sampling wine and beer, pastries and Italian sausage, from Spinelli’s Bar Italia, the Zocalo Gallery and Delish Custom Cakes. It’s a pre-show walking and eating tour of Little Italy – and there’s no doubt that Puccini sounds even sweeter if you’re full of champagne and red velvet cupcakes. If you’d rather eat on your own at one of the great Italian (or Chinese or Vietnamese) restaurants in the area, you can also get half-price rush tickets at the door, or tent flap, starting at 7:45. (For ticket info, go towww.mercuryopera.com)

As if that weren’t enough, every performance includes intermission fireworks, in the middle of Caboto Park. It’s not only a fun and fantastic counterpoint to the elegant solemnity of the opera – it’s a great way to share the joy and colour of the event with all the neighbours, who gather on the hill every night for the free fireworks show.

Madama Butterfly embraces her son Sorrow

If you love opera, do yourself a favour and scoot down to Giovanni Caboto tonight for the last performance. If you’ve never seen an opera, this is your chance to fall in love with Puccini and Butterfly, up close and personal. And if you’ve never or rarely ventured into this historic part of Edmonton’s city core, come down to 95th Street tonight to Little Italy. Even if you don’t see the show, even if you just walk up and down 95th Street, shop at the Italian Centre, have dinner at Sorrentino’s, and take in the free fireworks, you’ll see the Via Italia and Edmonton’s so-called “inner city” through fresh and enchanted eyes. That’s the power of music. The power of love.

What makes a city feel “real”? What makes it feel cosmopolitan, full of life and soul? It’s due in no small part of courage and visionary artistic pioneers and innovators like Malcolm Forsyth and Daria Parada - who share with us the gift of seeing and inhabiting the place we live in a whole new way. Who give us the gift of music, and of love itself – who give our city its spirit, its identity, and its true life."

Madame Butterfly unleashed in Edmonton

Kathleen Ochoa -The Unknown Studio

I’m not sure that many people attended Mercury Opera’s production of Madame Opera the weekend of August 27th, but, for those of us who made it out to this unique outdoor event, it was totally worth it.

This intimate, alternatively staged, “reader’s digest” version of production of Madame Butterfly was a version that even on this bit chilly of an evening, was engaging and emotionally moving. What really stuck out with this unique production of Madame Butterfly however was the alternative space in which to hold an opera and how the whole evening was packaged. It was a special night I’m sure to everyone who attended.

The gala began at 6pm and you were invited to three places along 95 St. in the Little Italy district. You got to travel between each place Spinelli’s Café, Zocali, and the new Delish Bakery just off 95St, and 107 ave. sampling small snacks, and various wines, as each place hosted casual reception fair with a neighbourly welcoming vibe.

You then made your way through the big elm trees and past the playground to the large tent in the middle of Giovanni Caboto Park. Feeling a bit like you’re walking into a circus tent, inside you were instantly struck by the mini theatre set up inside, not a bad seat in the house, little trees designing the space and an actual live orchestra awaiting you.

You had the feeling, especially as the show progressed that you were lucky enough to have stumbled on the best kept secret in town, an intimate and relatively small performance space with romantic tenors and sopranos singing just for you and your friends.

Mercury Opera’s founder and artistic director, Darcia Parada although working back and forth from New York City and Edmonton for the past years has thankfully chosen to stay in Edmonton, and bringing with her the inspiration she had participating in performance culture in NYC back to Edmonton. Her biography tells us she “began dreaming of staging opera in unusual spaces” after performing La Boheme in a loft in Tribeca.

If you’ve ever lived, worked or traveled in NYC it’s not hard to be inspired by the seemingly endless array of alternative ways to see performances. If you have any experience producing shows, site-specific shows in alternative spaces in particular, you can’t help to notice when that alternative space works or doesn’t. You become extra sensitive to when there is no real attention to the space itself and how an event can seem just “plunked” down somewhere without any consideration for how the space is being used in relation to what’s happening. It is a challenge to create an event in inspired space — have it functional and yet designed so it doesn’t look empty, to envision how the audience is going to engage and see the performance space, and to consider the overall flow of the evening, what people in general will want to be doing in between the entertainment, how they will flow, where the bathrooms are, etc.

Mercury Opera seemed to have considered it all, from the first step into the mini magical world inside the tent, to the size and design of the performance and audience space, to intermission where you exited the tent only to find fireworks just steps away, giving a small but not chintzy display of fireworks, (even more interesting if you had read in the program that the fireworks themselves had been colored and choreographed by the theme of the characters of the opera), to the porta-potties a little distance away, if you were like me and perhaps got a little carried away by the free prossecco offered earlier.

It’s such a nice surprise when the vision fits to the size of the “fishtank” so to speak, having the right sized cast, a well-rehearsed, professional cast and orchestra, simple yet professional lighting, simple yet well designed set and stage direction, a well-thought out audience seating arrangement. The show itself can then really come alive and the strength of performance be highlighted in the space rather than having all the elements detract from it, again leaving you with a feeling, “well, that was a good idea at least…”

No, the Mercury’s opera staging of Madame Butterfly was an incredibly well done experiment, showcasing some real up and coming musical talent, all flown in from New York to perform in a beautiful welcoming event full of appreciative, well- cared for guests.

This is a shout out to Mercury Opera for having the guts, and skills in contributing an inspired vision .

Kathleen Ochoa is an Edmonton-based dance artist, teacher, producer, writer and researcher in the burgeoning field of embodiment studies. She has lived, studied and worked as dancer and yoga instructor in NYC, Montreal, Marseille, Paris, and Rome.