Shu-Ying Li: A Butterfly Who Has Everything

Shu-Ying Li as Madama Butterfly

Soprano Shu-Ying Li knew she wanted to sing as a child growing up in Shandong Province in northeastern China.  Li's father was an engineer. Her mother worked in the silk business.  She studied Chinese music as an undergraduate in college, “folk songs and Chinese traditional music,” she said.

   One day she heard “O mio babbino caro” (“Gianni Schicchi”) and “Un bel di” (“Madame Butterfly”).

   “What music!  It was like goose bumps. It just melted me.  I told my voice teacher, ‘I want to learn this kind of music.’

 ‘Oh, that’s western opera,' she said.  'Puccini wrote this a lot.’”

   Li, for whom Cio-Cio San in “Butterfly” is now a signature role, will sing “Un bel di” in Cincinnati Opera’s “Madame Butterfly” at 7:30 p.m. June 11 and 13, 3 p.m. June 15 at Music Hall.  (All Cincinnati Opera evening performances now begin at 7:30 p.m.)

   To learn western opera in China, Li listened to recordings and “imitated them.”  After she had learned “a few arias,” she went to Shanghai Conservatory to sing for Madame Xiaoyan Zhou, director of the international opera center there.  Out of the thousands of aspiring young singers who audition each year, few are chosen.  That year Madame Zhou chose only five.   “I’m so lucky. She chose me,” said Li, in Cincinnati for her first complete run through of "Butterfly" the end of May.

   Li studied opera, lieder, French and Italian songs and classic bel canto. “Those kinds of worlds just came to me. I learned aria by aria by aria.  My voice teacher was very open-minded.  She said Renata Scotto is the great Butterfly in the world."  On a visit to Shanghai, Scotto coached Li   “She gave me such great character detail.  From those five lessons I still carry lots of imagination from her and what she told me.”

   Li describes herself as "really crazy for drama.  That made me really crazy for opera, otherwise I would be a concert singer."

   Li packed up her arias in 1998 and took them to Budapest, where won second prize in the Budapest International Voice Competition.  Her opera debut was with the Budapest Opera.

   “It was Musetta (Verdi’s “La Traviata”). I was so pretty!  It was a life experience -- my very first opera with gorgeous red hair and blue eye shadow.  It’s so funny.”

   From there, she went to the Mannes College of Music in New York, where she studied with another famous teacher, Ruth Falcon, and earned her professional studies diploma in 2002.

   Li sang her first Butterfly for Providence Opera in 2001.  Since then, she has sung it more than 50 times, in Europe, Asia and the United States, including the Mark Lamos production to be presented in Cincinnati which she performed with New York City Opera on PBS’ “Live from Lincoln Center” in March.

   The design, by Michael Yeargan, is minimalist, with sliding panels framing the set front and back and a single stair unit extending the width of the stage.  It allows for “a lot of movement" and for the focus to be on the music and the drama, Li said.

   True to the fervent Puccini, the Lamos production, with atmospheric lighting by Cincinnati Opera's Thomas Hase, is dramatic to the hilt.  There is enhanced interaction between Butterfly and Sorrow, her child with the American naval officer Pinkerton, who has married, then callously abandoned her.  Sorrow will be performed by six-year-old Tyler Christopher Backer of New Jersey, a vibrant young actor who stole hearts in New York in the non-singing role.

   “The child has so many things to do onstage,” said Li.

Tyler Christopher Backer as Sorrow

“There is so much communication between the mother and the little one.”  Sorrow is onstage (though blindfolded) during Butterfly’s suicide.  Instead of ritual hara-kiri ("belly cutting" or disembowelment) she will slit her throat “with a big knife” just as Pinkerton enters the room.

   “It adds weight to the tragedy," said Li.  "I think it’s a coming thing."

   Butterfly is a long, taxing role that is also very complex, since the singer must go from a 15-year-old innocent -- so in love that she throws off religious and family tradition to marry Pinkerton -- to a crushed, disillusioned adult when he returns to Nagasaki after three years' absence with his “real” (American) wife.

   “If you want to be the best Butterfly, you have to have everything," said Li.  Voice, passion.  You have to be able to cut through the big, lush orchestra.  It could be very dangerous.  Some sopranos, after doing Butterfly many times, disappeared.”

   Li is “very careful,” she said and practices “positive energy.”

    “I think about where I have a big moment, then I give it all.  I don’t want myself to think about getting tired.  I get tired after I die, when I lie on the floor!  When the curtain is up, if the audience loved it, then I’m back to life again.”

   The other aspect of Butterfly is her traditional Japanese image and demeanor.  She is a geisha, a performer skilled in the art of movement and able to get around gracefully in a heavy kimono and obi (sash). 

   “Facially, you can visualize me easily (as Butterfly)," Li said.  "She’s an Asian girl.  After the (heavy, white) makeup, I become Japanese."

   Her body movement, however, "has to be different from Chinese.  In life, a Chinese girl is actually multi-style, or no style.  They’re very Italian sometimes, especially in my hometown in the north part of China ( Qingdao, home of Qingdao beer).  We’re very open.  When I go to Japan and see Japanese lady, even as they walk on the street, their body language is so humble.  So little and generous, and so timid.”

   Li sang Butterfly in Japan in 2004 with the New York City Opera on tour.  To help prepare her character, she sat on her hotel steps and watched the people walking.  Doing that, she can "pick up even little things, like when they write something or pick up a telephone.  The body movement is so little and so cute.”

   After the performances in Japan, “people came and said ‘we thought you were Japanese.’  I was so glad.”

   Li thinks Butterfly is a great role for her because Puccini gives her "the emotion and personality” of an Italian.  “I have that kind of personality, then I just add the subtle acting things.  I try to add more after each production.  I watch lots of Japanese movies and look at all the geishas’ movements.  I try to transform myself as much as the audience can believe me as a Japanese girl.”

   Two years ago, Li moved back to Shanghai, where teaches at the conservatory when not singing on tour.  “I would really love to see my family more often (her parents live in Qingdao, about an hour’s flight from Shanghai, she said). My husband (Hong Liu) works in Hong Kong, but he’s going to move to Shanghai in September.  We will teach at the same conservatory.  He’s a musicologist specializing in ancient Chinese Taoist music.”

   Li also wants to sing more in her native country.   “Since I became an opera singer, I never really performed in China."  On May 28, she and other Chinese artists sang a benefit concert at the Asia Society in New York for victims of the Chinese earthquake.

   Vivacious and outgoing, with a hearty laugh, Li feels a calling to teach as well

.  “I really admire my voice teacher (Xiaoyan Zhou).  She’s 91 this year and still teaches.  I used to wish that one day I could be a great voice teacher like her, to have lots of great singers be your students.  The Shanghai Conservatory just opened the door for me and said we support your career.  Maybe it’s time for me to gain some credit in the teaching field.”

   Onstage Li remains very busy, with two more Puccini operas coming up next season, “Tosca” and “Manon Lescaut.”  “In the future I’d like to do a little more Verdi, like ‘La Traviata’ and ‘Ballo in maschera.’”  She will do her first “Don Carlo” ( Elizabeth) in September.

   “I like Verdi’s music.  It’s healthy singing and very noble.  It’s a different character.”