It’s All In The Details – Madama Butterfly in Valencia
Puccini’s Madame Butterfly is a well-known, well-loved, and indeed popular opera. The genre is replete with fatal women, Butterfly, Tosca, Manon, Carmen, Lucía, Violetta and Katya, to give just one example, who in the end succeed, so it might be thought that there is not much to see in terms of new perspectives when such a familiar work with such good -The theme worked is staged. Opera lovers, however, will confirm that there definitely is.
Audiences tend to fall into two distinct groups, those for whom any deviation from their own preconceived ideas spells the end of civilization, and those for whom radical interpretation is a welcome challenge to the establishment. However, there is another perspective where directors, through small changes in mise-en-scène, can completely transform the way we understand these often rigidly interpreted stories. Such was the success of Emilio López, the director of the recent production in Valencia. His 2021 staging of Butterfly will air on Opera Vision on Sunday, December 19, and will be available via that website for a few weeks. It succeeds on several levels, one of which is revealing.
Let’s start with the term verismo. That certainly applied to the way Puccini approached his work and implies that the setting should not be palatial and that the characters can be portrayed as ordinary people. We can assume that the composer never experienced the opera stage in Japan in the mid-19th century, so if verismo applies to Butterfly, then it applies mainly on an ideological level. That said, opera’s potential for period drama is often so far beyond designers and directors that even recognition of verismo in the result it is darkened. In other words, everything gets pretty before it can get believable. Forks verismo that suffers
In the first act, Cio-Cio-san describes how she comes from a poor home and became a geisha due to lack of opportunities. The Mikado presented her father with the ceremonial dagger that she ultimately uses to take her life and asked him to use it on himself. We must assume that Butterfly’s family was already out of favor. She then compounds this misfortune by rejecting her cultural and religious traditions, an act that Uncle Bonze condemns, leading her friends and community to reject her, all except Suzuki, of course. The fact that Puccini then takes us to the love scene on the wedding night often obscures this rejection. In the Valencia production, a curtain that had starred cherry blossoms becomes the starry night of the couple’s ecstasy, but it does so by melting like celluloid in an overheated projector, hinting that the comforting cocoons of the past have been destroyed. The starry night persists in acts two and three, but thus becomes a symbol of Butterfly’s continued isolation and insistence, nay, imperative, to live in the past.
Cio-Cio-san is often presented as a meek and therefore stereotypical Asian woman, who has never practiced the word “boo” with geese nearby. As a result, she often becomes Pinkerton’s devoted naïve and even naive, though as a geisha she must have had experience with the night sailor. Her pleading image kills her in public, perhaps, but it strips her of the identity and individuality that she certainly has of her, otherwise she would never have pursued her own private desires with such determination. .
The point is, she doesn’t have many options. She is poor. She is a geisha. She has done her job. Pinkerton offers her a way out, which she, perhaps naively, accepts. But once she’s made the commitment, she can’t go back. She wants to please him, but in doing so she suffers rejection from her own community. But she has to accept the risk.
In Valencia, Emilio López recognizes that Cio-Cio-san lives in poverty. Ignored by Pinkerton for three years and still shunned by her own community, she and Suzuki live in decay and filth. The temptation to portray Butterfly still in her opulent geisha garb is pointless and convincingly avoided in this production. Suzuki confirms this poverty in the script. What too often seems like blind faith on Butterfly’s part now becomes a necessity, imposed by her community due to their rejection of her. She can’t go back. She has no other choice. This is an element of verismo in opera that directors often overlook.
But in this Valencian production, the real surprise comes at the end. Pinkerton has returned but has refused to see Butterfly. He storms off because he can’t take it anymore… However, he wants the child. Butterfly tells her new American wife and Sharpless to come back in half an hour to take the child. She notes that Pinkerton has not heard her request.
However, Butterfly has plans of her own, plans that involve using that ceremonial weapon her father used to commit suicide. The elements are clear. Butterfly commits suicide, Pinkerton’s voice is heard returning. But maybe not…
The usual way to treat this is to have Butterfly stab herself in the orchestral tutti and then have the sound of Pinkerton’s voice played as she dies. If Pinkerton is not seen, it could be argued that he really was unpleasant all along and that Cio-Cio-san is imagining the voice and thus deluding herself. If she appears, then her character is rather liberated. If only Butterfly had lingered, then the ecstasy of the starry night might have returned. But then she had already waited three years…
Sometimes Cio-Cio-san hears the voice and then stabs himself. Again, we have her imagining the sound as a possibility, but we also have the possibility that she is suffering from a form of self-loathing as a result of the rejection. Once again, this approach internalizes Butterfly’s suffering.
In the Valencia production, the orchestral tutti arrives with a drawn dagger, but Butterfly turns toward the entrance of her house when she hears Pinkerton’s call. She waits for him to show up and recognize her and then kills herself.
The effect is to transform his suicide into an act of defiance. She knows that the child will be cared for. She has been shunned by her society and by Pinkerton. She is alone and has no future. But now she is also determined that he does not possess her and wants to show her contempt. You won’t own me like chattel, she thinks to herself. And so her character transforms from the meek and mild recipient of tragedy into a defiant, if dead, individualist. At least she has affirmed her own position. She is different and amazing, which beautifully illustrates that sometimes the most radical transformations are achieved through the details.
