Madama Butterfly (Southend – tour)

It's a long time since I've seen – and heard – a Butterfly who really tugs at the heart-strings both musically and dramtically, but Elena Dee contrives it in the title role of this Ellen Kent touring production. She phrases Puccini's score beautifully, from the initial "Ah! Quanto cielo", so full of joy and wonder, to the final death blow of "Lascialo giocar".

This Butterfly is indeed a still-naïve teenager, so that her ancestral lares et penates appear truly to be the dolls of her childhood – one understands why Pinkerton sees them as nothing more than that. Nadejda Shvets' set focusses on a veritable doll's house centre stage, a tear-drop delicate construction.

Zarui Vardanean contributes a credible Suzuki, genuinely concerned for her young mistress' happiness; the flower duet ("Scuoti quella fronda") as the two women prepare for Pinkerton's return is as magical as it should be. Ruslam Pacatovici is the manipulative seen-it-all-before Goro. What lets Kent's production down badly is the casting of the two principal male singers.

Granted that Southend's Cliffs Pavilion lacks an orchestra pit, so that the singers had to project over the Moldova National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra under Nicolae Dohotaru all-but at stage level, but that's no excuse for Giorgi Meladze (Pinkerton) and Vladimir Dragos (Sharpless) delivering their first scene exchanges in an unrelenting forte.

The production makes no attempt to make Pinkerton anything than the sort of brash interloper that native residents despise; Meladze's acting makes this clear. Dragos is marginally more sympathetic but one sense the inherent weakness in the US consul, a man who perhaps is just keeping a pre-retirement low profile.

Madama Butterfly tours nationally and in Ireland until 2 May.