The opening of Japan to Western trade in the 1850s engendered a flurry of exotic-themed art in Europe and the United States. Painters and interior designers, dramatists and musicians created numerous works that evoked the mysteries of the land of the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Many of these works examined the clash of East and West, including a French novel, an American short story, and then an American play that told the story of a teenage geisha who marries a Western naval officer. For his sixth opera, Madama Butterfly, the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini drew on the play, by David Belasco, to create a piece of theater that has been one of the world’s favorite operas almost since its premiere in 1904.
But the story’s basic premise — a young Japanese girl renounces her religion and culture to marry a U.S. Navy officer who considers the marriage to be only one of convenience until he can have a “real” marriage to an American girl — and its tragic ending are harder for today’s audiences to accept in a time of global digital interconnectivity and heightened cultural sensitivity.
Which is why Palm Beach Opera, which will open its 61st season this month with three performances of Madama Butterfly (Jan. 20-22) at the Kravis Center, has decided to tackle the issue head-on by hiring a cultural consultant.
“To ensure we are maintaining the delicate balance between honoring operatic tradition and respecting Japanese culture, PBO is collaborating with cultural consultant Satomi Hirano, the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, and stage director Alison Moritz, who was specifically selected to direct this piece because of her experience with the work and her alignment with PBO’s initiative,” the company’s artistic director, David Walker, said in a prepared statement.
“We are embracing the opportunity to dive into everything from the costumes to the set to produce and experience this masterpiece with a new perspective,” he said. “We believe there is still much to be learned from ‘Madama Butterfly,’ and we aim to celebrate its beauty while continuing to reflect on how it resonates with us today.”
Moritz, 38, who has directed three previous productions of Butterfly, said she is happy to be working in opera at a time when it has left behind that part of its past in which the art form was geared only to an elite viewer. That allows her to take a fresher look at the stories of the individual operas.
“As a person, I am always looking for the power dynamic of the story, because I think that’s one of the fundamental things that opera is about,” Moritz said, speaking just before the holidays by phone from her home in Baltimore. The structure of opera allows the art form to “take something that is politically or socially problematic and examine it through the lens of the personal or familial. And I think ‘Butterfly’ does that really beautifully,” she said.
Butterfly is set in Nagasaki in a time contemporaneous with the premiere, in the first years of the 20th century. Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton has concluded a deal with a marriage broker that will give him a house he can rent for 99 years, plus a Japanese bride with whom he can make a home. His bride will be a 15-year-old girl named Cio-Cio-San (pronounced Cho-Cho-San), or Butterfly (Moritz says she thinks Butterfly is actually 18 or 19, and lies about her age). After an unpleasant encounter with her uncle, a Buddhist priest who denounces Butterfly for rejecting her religion, the now-married Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton sing a passionate love duet and go into their house.
In the second act, it’s three years later. Pinkerton, who left Japan after a few months, has not yet returned, but Butterfly is certain he will (she signs the celebrated aria “Un bel di,” or “One fine day”). The U.S. consul, Sharpless, arrives with a letter saying Pinkerton is on his way to Nagasaki, but with a new American wife, Kate. He tries unsuccessfully to tell Butterfly of her husband’s remarriage, but then a cannon shot is heard, announcing the return of Pinkerton’s ship, the Abraham Lincoln. Butterfly and her faithful servant Suzuki go about preparing the house for his return, and then Butterfly keeps a vigil for him overnight and into the next day.
In the third act, Pinkerton and Sharpless arrive at the house with Kate Pinkerton. The lieutenant is consumed by guilt and remorse, and leaves, after which Butterfly enters, only to find Kate, and learn that she and her husband are there to take Butterfly’s child, which she has named Trouble, back to the States. Butterfly agrees to give up her son if Pinkerton will come to get him. Alone in the house, she takes the same dagger with which her father killed himself, and commits suicide, as Pinkerton returns, calling for her.
Palm Beach Opera has double-cast its production. Soprano Jennifer Rowley sings Cio-Cio-San on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and Toni Marie Palmertree sings the role Saturday night. Tenor Jonathan Burton is Pinkerton on Friday and Sunday, and Robert Watson takes over Saturday night. Singing Suzuki is mezzo Renee Tatum, and the role of Sharpless is sung by baritone Troy Cook. Carlo Montanaro will conduct.
The standard version of Butterfly is the fifth one Puccini produced after the opera’s disastrous premiere at La Scala in February 1904. His revisions took out a good portion of extra business with Butterfly’s family, and Moritz says one of those versions tips the scale into a kind of satirical humor that doesn’t play well today.
“I think those versions of ‘Butterfly’ can be done, but I think that needs to be built into the production from the ground up, in terms of the casting, and in terms of the design team,” said Moritz, who has directed the “Brescia version” of Butterfly.
Moritz, whose fascination with opera began as a 9-year-old in St. Louis, after seeing a production of Offenbach’s operetta La Belle Hélène, points out that while Japanese culture is explored in the opera (for which Puccini borrowed authentic Japanese melodies to help set his scene), Butterfly is nevertheless a highly stylized drama and not a documentary.
“This is a very made-up world, a collision of American and Japanese cultures as seen through an Italian imagination,” she said. Besides, Cio-Cio-San transcends her culture.
“She is the most American character in the show. She is such an optimist … She is far more of an American woman, as I think about being an American woman, than Pinkerton is an American man,” Moritz said. “We see her build a castle in the air and will it into being, which is such a signature American vantage point. And she’s really the one at the fulcrum of change, and that’s also a signature American thing.”
Moritz said she is pleased that Palm Beach Opera is willing to have a conversation about the issues raised by this beloved opera, which she says offers important perspectives despite its origins in a less enlightened past.
“This piece is framed as a tragedy, and that’s something we can all learn from. I think that has to be very clear on the stage, and it has to be set up so that the people who make it to the rehearsal room, and the people who are being represented on stage, feel safe and respected.
“We want opera to be a safe space for dangerous stories,” she said.
IF YOU GO
Madama Butterfly will be performed at 7:30 pm Friday, Jan. 20; 7:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 21; and 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 22, in Dreyfoos Hall at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts at 4000 Okechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Tickets start at $25. Call 561-833-7888 or visit pbopera.org for more information.