Posted16 Apr 2024

Director's Note: Madame Butterfly

European men created the Butterfly story. Pierre Loti wrote the semi-autobiographical Madame Chrysanthème in 1887; John Luther Long published the short story “Madame Butterfly” in 1889; David Belasco adapted that novella into a play two years later (with a famous, 14-minute, silent “waiting” scene); and Puccini saw the play and composed Madama Butterfly in 1904, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. These works were all part of the wave of European fascination with Japan that began after Admiral Matthew Perry forcibly opened Japan to the West in 1854 with the Convention of Kanagawa.

Puccini’s Butterfly is a fifteen-year-old Japanese girl who epitomizes faithfulness and self-sacrifice. She converts to Christianity, severs ties with her family, raises a child for more than two years while waiting for her husband’s return, relinquishes her son, and kills herself. Pinkerton describes her as “doll-like” and joyfully exclaims, “To think that that toy is my wife!”

Is Butterfly believable? Or is her story a fantasy invented by White men who knew very little of Japan, Japanese culture (not to mention music), and Japanese women? And what does it mean to perform this opera today when it can perpetuate erroneous, harmful stereotypes of “the submissive Asian woman?” Why do other opera companies continue to cast non-Asian singers in Asian roles and employ the offensive tradition of yellowface?

Our production casts Asian and Asian American singers in all of the lead roles and separates Pinkerton’s fantasy ─ a perfect, “doll-like” puppet ─ from CioCio San’s true Spirit. Over the course of the opera, the Spirit awakens to the role she is being asked to play. Our CioCio San realizes the trap ─ and trope ─she’s been caught within and bravely walks into a new chapter ahead.

Hopefully, we can accompany her.