Gracious me, Sydney...  you are a rare visitor to this area of these boards?  But you are most welcome!

I didn't see this production, but it was clearly going appallingly badly for ENO even during its gestation..  I happened to be there seeing a different show (THE CARMELITES) at the time, and things were so bad they had staff going through the lobby crowd trying to press hastily-printed flyers for this BUTTERFLY into their hands, and even sign them up for tickets on the spot.

As Mr Dough has written elsewhere of another ENO production - this is what happens when people from unrelated disciplines are brought into the opera-house with no experience there at all, and let loose on a major work.  I can half-believe that an established (non-musical-)theatre director might do something good with a musical, or a contemporary work that needs rooting in gripping visual moments.  But film directors?  Who allegedly asked for "cuts" to be made so that the scene would match the number of seconds they had planned for it?  ("But on the recording this is 11 seconds shorter?")

Moreover, as almost every opera producer without exception will aver, Puccini is practically immune to gimmickry, because his scores are so fully written...  any attempt to do something different to what the music is clearly informing is doomed to abject failure.  The moment of Butterfly's suicide is delineated with microscopic precision in the score - for those who have ears to listen (for example - the audience, who detect a cheap trick with the acuity of a racetrack turf-accountant).  Even avowed avant-gardists such as David Freeman (whose name was taken in vain elsewhere on a board elsewhere, by a writer of little ability or knowledge) stayed resolutely with Puccini's intentions throughout when staging his 360-degree production at Earls Court.

The name of Mark Elder in the above does at least point towards some hope of quality on the musical side, even if the dramatic side was pants.

I see in all of this a more regrettable trend...  in a world over-saturated with "classics", the forlorn marketing hope for filling such shows is to have them staged by "celebrities" (no matter that they know nothing of the craft required) and/or to stage "gonzo" productions in which the outlandish "production concept" of the show has become the story....  when it was supposed instead to have told the story.   Having more-than-adequate performers in the roles is no longer enough - because everyone has Guleghina, Villazon, Gheorgiu, etc at home on dvd anyhow.  That's no longer "a draw". 

I had the great misfortune to see Robert Wilson's "production" of BUTTERFLY at the Bol'shoi last year.  To call it a "production" is a misnomer, for it's a "non-production".  There is no action.  Performers stand in front of Mr Wilson's scenery and sing.  Pinkerton is dressed, unaccountably, in a kimono,  and when he offers Sharpless "milkpunch o whiski?" he proffers a carafe of sake...

The best production of BUTTERFLY I've seen was by WNO, which was extremely simple, but with credible, dramatic action (Dennis O'Neill, Patricia O'Neill, Donald Maxwell) that served the composer's intentions admirably well.

At the ENO I found the puppet worked quite well but thought the rest of the production pure kitsch (sp?). Most of the audience seemed to love it though, and to be fair I have a bit of a phobia of Madame Butterfly at the best of times.

This surprises me.  By the first night it was a sell-out, and tickets were very difficult to come by (though the following spring's revival sold more slowly).

It is a very beautiful production.  Its two main failings were general superficiality in favour of visual spectacle (the child puppet NOT being an example of this), and, in the case of the ENO run, vocal miscasting and appalling diction.  I don't understand the "vulgar burlesque" description at all.

Link to my Opera Japonica review from 2005 (look under November).
http://www.operajaponica.org/archives/london/londonletterpast05.htm

(Hmmm... I'd forgotten I'd made that point about the responsibility involved in a new production of a standard-repertoire work.  I said that about the new Carmen, too, and didn't realise I was repeating myself  )

It's coming back to London in a few months...

You've hit the nail on the head there, Gradus

I envy you seeing Opie as Sharpless - a man who's been overlooked in the Honours Lists for far too long now, I'd say?   Did anyone see his Rigoletto at Opera North?  (I missed it, since I'm far away for 96% of the year).