WA Opera presents Madama Butterfly at His Majesty’s Theatre with Perth’s Fleuranne Brockway as Suzuki

Living overseas for the past seven years can make a Perth mezzo-soprano have an insatiable appetite for all things Aussie on their return. Chatting over a cappuccino in Northbridge, Attadale-raised Fleuranne Brockway jokes about it taking over her personality, with a wish list while she is home ranging from lamingtons, pies and brunch, to a walk in Mundaring and the possibility of braving Rottnest Island in winter. The chill should not be too much of a factor, given the Santa Maria College and University of WA graduate has been based in Wiesbaden, Germany, since 2019 after winning a German-Australian Opera Grant, working her way up in the opera world repertoire. She is now briefly back where it all began for WA Opera’s season of Madama Butterfly, having made her debut with the company as a Wesfarmers Arts Young Artist in 2018, performing the role of Mercedes in Carmen. “To finally be performing as a professional for a lot of my family and friends who were in the audience was a big step up for me,” Brockway says. “To return in an even bigger role, after having so much experience away, it feels really rewarding and like a big full circle moment. “It’s a weird feeling of being home and feeling like no time has passed, but I’ve got so much more to say now, and I feel so much more confident. I know how to do this now. I’ve done this enough elsewhere. I really think that I can bring the best of myself onto stage and that feels great.” Brockway is singing Suzuki, marking WA Opera’s first time presenting former Opera Australia artistic director Moffatt Oxenbould’s successful 1997 version of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, which has since been restaged several times in Sydney and Melbourne. Performed with WA Symphony Orchestra, the production is also WA Opera’s return to the famous opera, sung in Italian with English surtitles, after a 10-year hiatus of programming the Cio-Cio-San and Lieutenant Pinkerton tragedy. “Oxenbould’s production has been touring around because it can stand the test of time, especially with not wanting to be appropriating cultures,” Brockway says, referring to the opera’s somewhat problematic past. “It’s not really a reflection of what Japan is, it’s more about a fascination with an idea and how it’s reflected through art. “It’s about this very honest connection, because we’re not amplified. It’s an orchestra and the voices connecting directly to you, so it’s this complete transference of emotion. This opera perfectly takes you on the story of each character, and you feel with them. You feel this immense joy and immense tragedy so purely within yourself. That’s the beauty of what opera can do.” While Brockway has previously performed as maid Suzuki — outdoors and on the water of Lake Constance at Austria’s 2023 Bregenzer Festspiele for an audience of thousands — she is welcoming the indoor reliability of His Majesty’s Theatre for this season. Rain washed out one the Austrian performances halfway through, although the turn of events did mean the opera stopped before tragedy struck in the storyline. Brockway’s trip home comes hot on the heels of her recent first prize win at the Concours musical international de Montreal, a prestigious vocal competition of multiple rounds, where her parents excitedly streamed the final at their Attadale home. It was her father Walter’s love of singing Gilbert and Sullivan that helped put Brockway on her career pathway. “I really loved musicals, and I loved singing, I was sort of obsessed with that, but I couldn’t dance at all,” the in-demand emerging artist says. “I was shown a recording of (Opera Australia’s) operetta The Mikado when I was about 14 … Because I was so in love with the way that they did it, I was looking up other stuff by Opera Australia and that’s when I came across opera. “Baz Luhrmann had done an Opera Australia production of La Boheme where all these young people were singing this love story and I was like ‘oh my gosh, this is it, this is exactly what I want to do’. They’re singing, there’s not a lot of dancing, the music’s incredible and they’re telling stories. That’s what really captured me. I wanted to be in this world.” Madama Butterfly is at His Majesty’s Theatre, July 26 to August 9. Tickets at waopera.asn.au.