Musically this a fair­to­middling Butterfly (an intelligent but reedy­voiced Pinkerton‚ a dull Sharpless‚ a sympathetic Suzuki‚ a very incisive Goro) given special interest by the lovely‚ slightly fragile voice and touching vulnerability of Ying Huang in the title role. Visually she is no disappointment: she is Butterfly to the life‚ acts very sensitively and withstands the great test of singing ‘Un bel dì’ in a single long shot: she phrases it beautifully and her gentle determination is very moving. So is her long scene with Sharpless‚ and her gradual succumbing to passion in the love duet is finely suggested. Frédéric Mitterand’s introduction of long pauses to mark changes of scene is irritating: there is a huge one before the Flower Duet‚ for example‚ during which a subtitle confusingly implies that what follows is dreamed by Butterfly’s child. No film director is likely to be happy with the Humming Chorus‚ during which nothing much happens: here we see a lot of black and white archive film footage of picturesque scenes from old Japan. The ensuing entr’acte‚ however‚ is quite beyond Mitterand‚ and it is simply omitted. Nor was I impressed by the airborne curses of the Amazing Flying Bonze. There are some lovely landscapes‚ however (the film was shot in North Africa)‚ and in scenes where Ying Huang is central the director sensibly allows her quiet stillness to work its magic. James Conlon’s conducting is competent‚ Richard Troxell is a likeably thoughtless Pinkerton‚ but only Jing Ma Fan’s strongly sung‚ ruthless fixer of a Goro is capable of occasionally stealing the screen from this Butterfly. She is the reason‚ and a compelling one‚ for acquiring this film.