London — Madama Butterfly, dressed in a refreshing white kimono and translucent veil, kneels beside an American officer who marries in a religious ceremony. The monk celebrates the wedding while guests in traditional Japanese robes watch over.
At first glance, there is no noticeable difference Royal Opera House2002 production revival of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Still, it’s the result of a year of consultation with scholars, practitioners, and experts to get rid of clichés and caricature tips.
Specifically, it means removing the “very white makeup” that performers have been wearing. By the beginning of the 20th century, when “Madame Butterfly” was set up, “no one was wearing white makeup on the street,” said a Japanese movement and design expert who was hired by the Royal Opera to renew his production. Said Sonoko Kamimura. ..
Mr. Kamimura worked to remove other anachronistic elements such as wigs, samurai-style hairstyles and costumes.
“I really like this opera because the music is beautiful, but it’s also a stereotype,” she said, adding that the Royal Opera House has found a way around this problem. “Rather than canceling the show,” she said. The house organized a “dialogue” around her that she was “really happy to be able to participate.”
Since its world premiere at La Scala in Milan in 1904, Madama Butterfly has become a staple of theaters around the world. First performed at Covent Garden in 1905, it is the ninth programmed work at the Royal Opera House and has been performed more than 400 times.
The depiction of a 15-year-old geisha conceived and abandoned by an American lieutenant is becoming more and more problematic for the 21st century, especially for heritage audiences in Asia. Institutions such as the Royal Opera House and the Boston Lyric Opera are working hard to keep things up to date in every way.
“We are very aware these days that opera and race have a complex relationship and history,” said Oliver Mears, director of opera at the Royal Opera House. “When a Western opera house portrays a different culture, it can make mistakes and there is always the risk that the level of credibility is not as high as possible.”
“There was certainly a lot of tension on the part of other opera companies about performing this opera at this point,” said Mears, who often canceled or shelved Madama Butterfly’s work. I said there is. It’s too dangerous to go there. “
“Madame Butterfly is a masterpiece, so I think it’s a big shame,” he said. “We want to interact with these works rather than cancel them.”
Similar revisions are being made throughout the Atlantic Ocean Boston Lyric Opera.. The talks there, known as the Butterfly Process, will lead to the production of an opera on the Lyric stage in the fall of 2023.
The lyrics were originally scheduled to be performed in the fall of 2020, “Madame Butterfly”, but it was delayed by a year due to the pandemic. At the time, “there were cases of increased racial discrimination and violence against Asian communities across the country,” said Bradley Bernatter, general and artistic director of lyrics, in an email. “It’s important to rethink the contemporary context before presenting the work,” said Vernatter, so production was further postponed after conversations with artists and staff.
He said the opera was not a “static museum work”, but social and political changes influenced the audience’s reaction to the opera. For example, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, “Madame Butterfly” was performed almost every season from 1907 to 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the work was away from the Met Stage until 1946.
After seeing David Belasco’s one-act play “Madame Butterfly: The Tragedy of Japan,” Puccini explained that Puccini had never set foot in Japan and decided to write an opera version. To study Japanese music, he took a Kabuki tour in Milan and asked the wife of the Japanese ambassador to Italy to sing Japanese folk songs. Puccini is unfamiliar with culture, so “the Japanese characters in his opera come off as a caricature,” Bernatter said.
Revising the opera to reflect the present day has its own pitfalls. In the fall of 2019, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto gave the latest performance of another Puccini opera “Turandot” about the Chinese princess who killed her suitor.
One of the three protagonists named Ping, Pan, and Pong in the original script was played by a Taiwanese-American tenor whose daughter Catherine Fu later wrote an opinion piece at the New York Times. To tone down the caricature, the director changed the names of the characters to Jim, Bob, and Bill.
“But the characters continued to play the stereotypes of feminine Asian men, laughing at each other on stage,” Hu wrote in an article. “Such changes are part of a broader trend, as the opera clumsyly considers the racist and sexist past.”
“To survive, opera must face the depths of racism and sexism and treat classic opera as a historical artifact rather than a dynamic cultural work,” she writes. “The opera director needs to work on the production of these classics as a curator or professor at the museum. He needs to educate the audience about the historical background and visualize the stereotypes.”
The chiefs of the Royal Opera House and the Boston Lyric Opera said that was exactly what they wanted to do.
“The goal here is to get everyone involved in art forms that weren’t traditionally inclusive, and to strengthen our community and audience through the music and stories we present,” Bernatter said. Told. “We believe we can do that by engaging, listening and incorporating it into our work with people from many backgrounds and life experiences.”
