In the last few days of December in 1903 Giacomo Puccini finally completed his opera, Madama Butterfly. It was the 6th of his 12 operas. The premiere at La Scala in Milan was a disaster. He called it “a lynching.” Puccini and his lyricists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, worked through many revisions, and Madame Butterfly was presented again, this time in Brescia in May of 1904. It was then a great success. After final tinkering, the opera reached its final form in 1911. This is the one we see now offered at the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.
And, my fellow DNAers, it is over the moon, a tear-jerking, brilliant, passionate, sentimental, masterful, irresistible, human, frothy confection of all those things which make us humans so wicked, so wonderful, so illogical, & so loveable as the supremely ironical creation of Nature. Madama Butterfly is a warts-and-all analysis of humanity itself. May God in heaven forgive you if you miss this production, for I surely will not.
Before beginning, let’s look at the pre-beginning, outside the concert hall in the piazza of Lincoln Center, the excitement one feels at dusk, at 7:15 when the lights are on the streets and the taxis, and the fountain at Lincoln Center is bubbling up with colored lights, and the audience is all dressed up, freshly bathed and perfumed. The silk hankies ready/ because they know/ the tsunami will flow/ when the plot’s wound up/ as tight as it will go.
When the audience is seated, conductor Pelto lifts his baguette and the overture tiptoes cautiously out from the pit, almost afraid to begin this tragedy. Already there’s a hint of trouble in the minor key. The set is properly minimal: two large shoji screens, downstage and upstage, separated by a great staircase. That is all. Against this spare set, the costumes are like a tray of jewels. Rare jewels with a curse on them as Fate moves her finger, pushing them around the tray.
Exposition: In the 1850s Commodore Perry forced Japan to open its ports to trading. His battleship stayed in the harbor until they agreed. Then, at the end of the century, Admiral Dewey conquered the Philippines for the United States, and President Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world to put it on notice that his diplomatic policy of the “Big Stick” was in force.
Tall, lean, handsome, hunky, Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, dressed in U.S. Navy uniform, white as a glass of milk, is a little cog in the great wheel of historical events. He is the embodiment of the “Big Stick.” When President Theodore Roosevelt sent The Great White Fleet around the world to show America’s new power to an apprehensive world, and The United States had defeated Spain, taking hunks of her empire, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, perception of the Yanks changed. The fleet was all painted white, Pinkerton was dressed in white. White in the Occident stands for purity. White in the Orient stands for death.
Subito, Pinkerton, enters with the marriage broker, Goro. With athletic grace, the glass of milk runs down the stairs on which momentous things will happen. The unctuous Goro minces down the stairs on little cat feet, complimenting Pinkerton on his good buy, the lovely bride, Cio-Cio San, Madame Butterfly. The Lieutenant bought himself a Japanese bride and took a 99-year lease on a house in Nagasaki, and the young Lieutenant is hot to get this contract consummated.
Now, enters Sharpless, the American Consul, in a swallow-tailed coat and striped pants. He warns the young Lieutenant to be careful. Butterfly may be a geisha, but if she genuinely falls in love with him there could be serious consequences when he sails away to America to REALLY get married. Giacosa and Illica foreshadow the plot. Who can doubt, even at this point, that is exactly what will happen to poor Butterfly’s heart. Pinkerton toasts to his future bride after a real marriage in America. Oh, boy. But wait, don’t get out the hankies yet. Have a mint.
The wedding is perfunctorily performed and the beautiful Butterfly tells us that, for her Lieutenant, she has given up her religion as a Buddhist. Enter Butterfly’s uncle Bonze, a Buddhist priest. He tells the family that she has forsaken her religion and her ancestors. They shun her. She is now an outcast with no one but her sailor boy, and after a few nights of love, sailor boy sails away to America with Admiral Dewey’s Great White Fleet.
Puccini had an innate feel for dramatic situations, and he was criticized for his cruel handling of the suffering heroine. Yet his Italian audiences loved the passionate tragedies he concocted and the way he linked his lyrical melodic style to a vivid characterization, using motive to tie action to the music. They applauded for more and asked, “How can you be truly happy unless you are crying your eyes out?” These are questions too large for me to wrestle with. Pardon the preposition.
Act II is III years later. Pinkerton has been showing the Stars and Stripes around the world, flexing the newly won American muscles to an apprehensive world. Susuki,
Butterfly’s maid, says, “Three years is a long time, Butterfly. That man’s not coming backi to Nagasaki, You were a geisha, so you know what men’s promises are worth.”
Butterfly says, “He will return once he hears that he has a beautiful son.” She dresses Sorrow, the boy, in a little jacket of stars and stripes. Through the music, we hear The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key. Nothing is left to chance to grind the plot. She tells Suzuki to back off because her beautiful son will draw her Lieutenant back to Nagasaki.
Sharpless comes with a letter. She is on her guard. Beware of Consuls bearing letters.
He doesn’t know how to break the news that, yes, Lt. Pinkerton is returning but not to stay. At this point, a ship’s cannon booms in the harbor. He has returned! Once he sees his son, he will stay. She dances with Suzuki and her son in his American flag jacket and hands him a little American flag. She decorates the house with flowers and sings a beautiful lyric, “ I am a cherry branch, shake me and let my petals shower to the ground.” And you know it’s time to make sure the hankies are near at hand.
Act III opens with a great yellow sun, which transmutes into a burning red disk, the symbol of Japan itself. It bathes everything in blood. One thing I will say about Puccini, he never lets you wander away from the point he is making.
At the top of the prophetic stairs enters Sharpless with a blond in a large sun hat, high heels and a muff (yes!). You can’t get more American than that. She is her Lieutenant’s American bride. Her name is Kate. She has come to take Butterfly’s son away with her to America. She says she knows this must be painful. Oh, sure! She says she is sorry. Oh, sure! She says she will raise little Sorrow never to forget her. He will never be unhappy. Oh, sure, a half-Japanese kid in a white schoolyard in Atlanta in 1904 will never be unhappy. Or a half-Japanese kid in a black schoolyard in Atlanta. Or for that matter a half-white kid in a Japanese schoolyard. No wonder she named him, Sorrow. Get out the hankies. This theatre better have flood insurance.
Pinkerton, that fink, has fled. Butterfly tells Kate that she will surrender her little son if Pinkerton will come for him in half an hour. Alone with her precious baby, she takes off the detested stars and stripes jacket and puts down the little American flag. She gives him a little Japanese flag with a burning sun and ties a red Japanese Hachimaki (headband) on his head. The burning sun gobo appears again. Now, the color isn’t just red, it’s hemoglobin. Here is the ancient symbol of a proud, fierce and ancient people who have survived bigger perils than Admiral Dewey’s White Fleet and its handsome milk men.
She hugs her child. The music surges, drawing such emotion from us that grown men are sniveling in row B, seats 16 and 18. The pathos of the scene, the emotion of the music, the brilliance of the orchestrations almost makes me laugh at the pathetic pilferage of Andrew Lloyd Weber when he borrows from Puccini, re-labeling it, “Memories”. How about, “Floor Sweepings”?
Rather than face life without the child she loves and the man she loves and the ostracism of her family and the poverty that will ensue, and the humiliation of abandonment, she commits Seppuku, ritual suicide, as her father earlier had done. The light designer, Robert Wierzel, bathes the staircase in photons of blood as Pinkerton rushes on to discover his faithful Butterfly, dead. Morta! The music is a thing alive, coiling about us, squeezing the last sinew of emotional resistance from us. At the end, Wierzel delays the house lights to give us time to compose ourselves before we leave.
The fine Soprano of Shu-Ying Li, as Butterfly is a joy. Her physical presence is lovely and majestic at the same time. Her voice is more than capable of conveying all the power and emotion of an extraordinary musical score. Her foil, Anthony Pulgram as Pinkerton, is a big -voiced tenor who makes you forget what a bad guy his character is. He plays and sings with such authority, such leadership that you want to root for him. You want to march right up to that stage and straighten him out because he is worth it. Jake Gardner as Sharpless is a magnificent baritone. Mark Lamos, the director, did not leave any thing undone, save for one. Mr. Gardner was uncomfortable with his size getting up and down to sit on those tiny floor cushions. That direction threw his scenes off. An audience that included many elderly felt for him every time he heaved himself up. But I quibble. The New York City Opera Company deserve a standing ovation, which indeed they received.
End
About the Author:
Paul Foster is an author and award-winning playwright. He co-founded La Mama Theatre, has authored seventeen plays, and twelve books, published in six languages. He is a frequent contributor to ArtsPass News, has written the narrations for several of the Arts4All Digital Library videos, including Byzantium, Cave Art, Michelangelo, Renaissance, and Antonio Vivaldi, The Red Priest, and is featured in the ArtsPass Live! interview “The Writers of Off-Off-Broadway”.
