Information
Vancouver Opera: Madama Butterfly's reviews
Japanese soprano Mihoko Kinoshita was superb as the vulnerable Cio-Cio San, her voice lustrous, flexible and full, shot with silver at soft dynamics, powerful at fortes, and flawless throughout this hugely demanding role...
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, May 30 2010
Japanese soprano Mihoko Kinoshita is earning a reputation as one of the best Butterflies in the world, and her VO debut made it clear why. She mixes flawless singing with the kind of emotion that isn't just felt, but lived, and yet she couches it all in a polite reserve that's perfect for turn-of-the-last-century Nagasaki...
GEORGIA STRAIGHT, May 30 2010
-But Butterfly hangs on the starring role of Cio-Cio-San, and Mihoko Kinoshita is completely convincing as a well-bred teenager smitten with an attractive foreigner. Kinoshita makes Puccini's conceit of giving a role that should be the province of a soubrette to a dramatic soprano work with devastating effectiveness.-
Vancouver Sun, May 30 2010
Her singing is athletic and passionate and her graceful movement exposes the nuances of both a naive girl and an enervated mother. She delivers her showpiece aria, Un bel di, vedremo (one fine day) with pristine tone and Tu? Tu? Picolo Iddio (you, you, beloved idol) as she bids a tearful farewell to her son, appropriately named Sorrow, with pathos.
Review Vancouver.com
Michigan Opera : Madama Butterfly's review
MOT's 'Butterfly' is an icon made flesh and sorrow
….Kinoshita's vocal accomplishment is absolute. Her voice, fresh and bright at the beginning when the 15-year-old geisha is about to be married to the tall, handsome U.S. naval officer, becomes the instrument of a dramatic tour de force through the grinding circumstances and nonstop singing of Act II. And at the end, Kinoshita soars anew in Butterfly's frantic, emotionally charged farewell to her child moments before she invokes the only honor remaining to her, hara-kiri.
Yet bound up in Kinoshita's vocal prowess is her stage savvy. Her acting instincts elevate her singing to a devastating naturalism. We believe in this ingenuous Butterfly as surely as she believes in her marriage to the long-departed Lt. Pinkerton. Her every inflection, physical as well as vocal, is real. Her death is nearly unbearable.
-Detroit News, November 2008
Baltimore Opera : Madama Butterfly's review
...gaining strength and richness; dramatically on target, with a wealth of detail in the acting. Kinoshita left quite a vivid mark on the role, especially in the Act 2 scene when Butterfly reveals to the U.S. consul Sharpless the child she had with the American naval cad, Pinkerton.
-Baltimore Sun, May 2008
Midland symphony Orchestra : Madama Butterfly's review
"Soprano's brilliant performance carries Butterfly'"
Mihoko Kinoshita took on the title role in the Midland Symphony Orchestra's production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" with little more than a week's notice -- which made her brilliant performance on opening night all the more impressive.
The Japanese soprano carried the show Friday night at the Midland Center for the Arts Auditorium, combining a beautiful voice with fine acting skill. She has a gorgeous tone and wonderful control, and was heartbreaking as the delicate young girl who weds an American naval officer.
Kinoshita embraced the full range of the Butterfly character, and was thoroughly convincing whether expressing the shyness of a child bride, the joy of young love or the sorrow and grief of a wronged wife...
-Midland Daily News,April 2008
Spokane Symphony : Verdi's Requiem review
it was in the tenderness of Kinoshita and Wilson in the Recordare or in the Wilson-Smith-Ford trio of the Lux aeterna that gave me goose-bumps. Kinoshita provided more of them in the final Libera me which took her soprano into her highest range with a quiet leap up to a high B-flat and then a sustained high C. The work ends with the soprano invading alto territory in a chant-like repeated note at a barely audible degree of softness.
-Spokanesman review Oct 2008
