On the wings of ‘Madame Butterfly,’ opera comes back to Honolulu

By Stephen Mark

HONOLULU STAR ADVERTISER

More than two years after the curtain came down on “The Marriage of Figaro,” opera has finally returned in full throat to Blaisdell Concert Hall with Hawaii Opera Theatre’s production of “Madame Butterfly.” Though it opened Friday, there are still two more stagings, today and Tuesday, of HOT’s lavish staging of the tragic Puccini masterpiece about the forlorn, teenage geisha, Cio-Cio-san, also known as Butterfly, who is sold as part of a “package deal” — wife, house and servants — to a wealthy, but flaky American naval officer, Pinkerton. “Butterfly” has been a favorite in Hawaii since HOT made its debut as an opera company in 1961. HOT had hoped to stage it last year in celebration of its 60th year, but the pandemic delayed that plan.

This year’s production features a few firsts. The cast will be more racially consistent with the story, with singers of Asian ancestry playing the roles of the Japanese characters. While the opera is sung in Italian, another nod to the setting of the story in Japan is that the supertitles will be in English and Japanese.

Performing as Cio-Cio-san for the first time will be soprano Karen Chia-Ling Ho from Taiwan, making her HOT debut. Her character is a romantic at heart, falling for Pinkerton immediately, but Ho sees some maturity in her as well.

“She goes from a naive girl, but she changes from a 15-year-old, and then she becomes a wife, and then a mother,” Ho said. “And then she decides to let her child have a better life in America. … It’s sad, but also I can see motherhood, the love of the mother.”

Tenor John Pickle will play Pinkerton, and sees him not so much as a cad but as a “product of his upbringing.”

“He comes from a wealthy family, and he thinks he can buy whatever he wants,” Pickle said. “At the time, he’s not thinking about the damage he might cause down the line. … In this moment (in Act 1), he really thinks he’s going to be with her, especially once she’s shunned by her own people.”

At a rehearsal earlier this week, both singers were in fine form, with Ho’s powerful, pure vocals soaring in Cio-Cio-san’s most famous aria, “Un bel di vedremo” (“One fine day”) in Act 2. She sees Cio-Cio-san’s final aria “Tu? tu? tu?” (“You? you? you?”) as “very hard,” because of its emotion. “It builds up to the limit” of her abilities, she said.

She and Pickle were enchanting in the Act 1 love duet “Bimba, Bimba, non piangere” (“Sweetheart, sweetheart, do not weep”), a favorite of Pickle’s, along with the trio “Io so che alle sue pene,” (“I know her pain”) in Act 3, which occurs when Pinkerton sees his child for the first time.

“It’s this really emotional, heart-wrenching moment, that’s underscored by some of the most beautiful music in the show,” he aid. “It’s a great juxtaposition.”

The opera features costumes by fashion designer Anne Namba, a frequent contributor to HOT productions. In an email, she said that in designing Cio-Cio-san’s silken, layered costume worn during the Act 1 love duet, she envisioned “a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis to expose a vulnerable and fragile girl,” whereas in Act II, when she prepares for Pinkerton’s return, “she is then transformed from the hardened, abandoned woman to the original butterfly by the layers of silk wings being added one at a time.”

Puccini’s magnificent score, which has hints of Asian music and quotes “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Sakura,” will be conducted by Benjamin Makino. Gregory Keller is the director.

PROGRAM NOTES

Madama Butterfly is one of the most popular and often-performed operas in the entire canon of Western culture. We all know the story, we all know the ending – even if we have never sat through the entire opera. We all recognize some of the music – even if we do not know the context within the drama. Since its premiere in 1904, Butterfly has become a cultural icon – and with that elevated status, it has acquired a lot of cultural “baggage.” Yet, for how frequently it is produced, there is very little variation in the way the piece is presented. When the curtain rises, we expect a realistic Japanese house with shoji screens, geishas in kimonos, and trees laden with fake cherry blossoms.

Cio-Cio-San mentions to Pinkerton on her wedding night that she is afraid because she has heard that if a man catches a butterfly, he will pin it to a board. And that is exactly what has happened to stage representations of this powerful, beautiful and brutal story of a clash of cultures. It has been trapped, stuck to a board and not allowed to fly.

Compare this to another early 20th Century work, Richard Strauss’s Salome, which is a similar cultural icon. Even if we have never sat through this opera either – we all know there is a titillating Dance of the Seven Veils and a gruesome ending with John the Baptist’s head served on a silver platter. Yet Salome has escaped being trapped by its success, and is presented on stage in a wide variety of styles – from setting the story in biblical times to placing it in modern-day Middle East. That story still manages to resonate its power and intensity no matter whether the characters are wearing swords and sandals, or combat boots and AK-47s.

We also tend to think of Butterfly as a “traditional” work and Salome as a “modern” work, in part because of this cultural baggage that has petrified the former and liberated the latter. It is intriguing to note that when Puccini came to New York in 1907 for the premiere of Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera, he also attended the American premiere of Salome. In an amusing interview with the New York Times, he hailed Salome as the greatest of all modern operas and said: “I find it admirable in every respect.” A few minutes later, a confused but well-intentioned bellboy appeared with a note for “Mr. Rossini,” to which the head of the Met replied: “Poor man, he’s dead.”

Puccini’s masterpiece presents even more challenges when producing the work in 2022, with our awakened concern for diversity and inclusion, our growing sensitivity to cultural appropriation, and our awareness of the long-damaging effects of imperialism. While I believe Puccini was trying his hardest to accurately and respectfully represent Japanese culture, he had never actually visited Japan. He listened to Japanese records, composed some musical phrases in a pentatonic scale to evoke the exotic sounds of the far East, and in one of the first examples of “sampling,” he interwove recognizable bits of the “Star Spangled Banner.” But like that embarrassed bellboy in the Hotel Astor, he was stumbling around his own cultural assumptions.

In this production of Butterfly, it is my hope to shake the dust off of the fake cherry blossoms, to remove that layer of lacquer which has grown cloudy with age, and to liberate that marvelous insect which has been stuck to the board for so long. What you will see tonight may challenge your assumptions about the piece, but it is always in service to allowing this beautiful creature to spread its wings, take flight and soar once again.