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.