`Madame Butterfly' Takes Flight On Film

------------ Movie review ------------

XXX "Madame Butterfly," with Ying Huang, Richard Troxell, Richard Cowan, Ning Liang, Jing-Ma Fan. Film version of Puccini opera, directed by Frederic Mitterrand, with James Conlon conducting the Orchestre de Paris and Choeurs de Radio France; in Italian, with English subtitles. Tomorrow through Monday and Jan. 25 and 26, at noon only, Varsity. Unrated; 129 minutes.

The cinematic history of opera is a checkered one, with a long list of opera movies that are neither great opera nor great film. Though there are a few success stories - such as the enchanting Bergman version of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" - the majority of "Otellos" and "Traviatas" and "Carmens" made for the big screen are marred by massive cuts in the score, overblown theatrics and casting problems.

Given this gloomy scenario, it's heart-warming to encounter a "Madame Butterfly" that beats many of these odds. There are truncations in the score, certainly, and director Frederic Mitterrand (nephew of the late French president) has made some questionable staging decisions. But this is nonetheless a film that serves both musical and theatrical values surprisingly well.

Crucial to the success of the film (which was released under the imprimatur of "Martin Scorsese Presents") is the casting of a believable soprano as Cio-Cio San, the story's 15-year-old heroine. After auditioning 200 candidates, Mitterrand and conductor James

Conlon found a 23-year-old Chinese soprano, Ying Huang, among the new graduates of the Shanghai Conservatory.

Huang's fluent and lyrical soprano, her appealing delicacy and her range as an actress make her one of few singers who can handle the role and also look great in close-ups. By turns naive and trusting, strong and purposeful, innocent and seductive, Huang creates a Butterfly more subtly nuanced than anything she could do on the opera stage (where the small details are often lost in the distance between performers and audience).

Rash and impetuous, Richard Troxell gives a winning grin to Pinkerton, the callous young sailor who marries Butterfly only to abandon her for a "real" American wife. Troxell looks a little like a bearded Harrison Ford, and would fit perfectly into an action movie. His voice has plenty of power; his acting is a little more rudimentary, with much back-slapping and not a great deal of reaction to what the other singers are doing.

At the last, stricken by remorse and dipping heavily into the alcohol, Pinkerton is left behind in the rain while the coach departs carrying his American wife (Constance Hauman) and Butterfly's son.

Richard Cowan is a very fine Sharpless, the American consul in Nagasaki who warns Pinkerton that Butterfly is completely devoted to him. And Ning Liang is good though rather remote as Butterfly's loyal servant, Suzuki. Jing-Ma Fan's Goro, who arranges Butterfly's marriage to Pinkerton, is musically on target and psychologically intriguing.

Usually, film directors try to break away from the confines of the opera set a bit more than Mitterrand does. We get some brief vignettes when Butterfly describes her former life as a geisha, and a few scenes of the Nagasaki shoreline (actually, it's a lake in Tunisia), but otherwise the camera stays close to home.

The exception is an ill-conceived Butterfly's "Humming Chorus" vigil, during which the camera moves to jerky and flickering footage of historical Japan, with military processions and street scenes. This may be intended to evoke 1904 Nagasaki, but it strikes a false and jarring note in what is otherwise a commendable effort.