GIACOMO PUCCINI
MADAMA BUTTERFLY
ANN-CHRISTINE MECKE
THE VOICE OF A BUTTERFLY EXOTICISM AND PUCCINI’S MUSIC FOR MADAMA BUTTERFLY A WOMAN BETWEEN TWO CULTURES It would be superfluous to pursue the ideas about her that sprang from Pinkerton’s fertile imagination. He undoubtedly enjoyed married life with her, but for reasons that differed from hers. The consul thought how very amusing it seemed. It was just Pinkerton’s style to take this delicate, lively, eager, unformed material and mould it in accordance with his shamelessly droll ideas. John Luther Long, Madame Butterfly In John Luther Long’s short story Madame Butterfly, Lieutenant Pinkerton leaves a contorted woman behind. In her efforts to please her American husband, Cio-Cio-San adopted parts of his behaviour without really understanding them. She makes foolish jokes at the most inappropriate moment, repeats bizarre opinions which Pinkerton had voiced sarcastically at some point, and alternates abruptly between Japanese politeness and Pinkerton’s casual impertinence.
Both the American consul Sharpless and the Japanese marriage broker Goro fluctuate between sympathy, amusement and dismay when they interact with Cio-Cio-San – similar feelings to those of most readers. Even though Long lets his protagonist survive, he leaves us in no doubt that Pinkerton has distorted her into a being unable to be at home in either Japanese or American society. A literary sign of being lost between the two cultures is Cio-Cio-San’s language – a defective English rife with mispronounced Yankee platitudes. In David Belasco’s play based on Long’s story, much of the characterisation of Pinkerton is lost, because the action of the one-acter takes place long after his departure. The audience never sees how the irresponsible lieutenant moulds his “shapeless material”, and there are few hints of how the strange behaviour of the protagonist comes about. Belasco also avoided the ironic undertone of the story, and gave it a tragic ending. In the play Madame Butterfly, Japanese culture plays a dominant role. Cio-Cio-San lives in a house which is typically Japanese, and there is only the tobacco jar left
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THE VOICE OF A BUTTERFLY
behind by Pinkerton, decorated with a paper American flag. When the curtain rises, Cio-Cio-San is offering flowers and rice at a Buddhist house altar. Given the setting, her statement that she lives in a “’merican house” seem absurd. Belasco kept the protagonist’s broken English. While the title figure in the short story clearly does not belong in either of the two cultures, Belasco’s play emphasises the absurdity of her desire to be regarded as an American. When Giacomo Puccini decided to work with his librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa to make an opera of this work (initially just the play, later the short story was included), he faced the task of inventing a musical counterpart not only to the setting of the action but also to the culture and personality of the protagonist.
PUCCINI’S SEARCH FOR JAPANESE SOUNDS Dear Gigi [Illica], I’ve sailed for Japan and will do my best to get there, but a few notes of popular music would have been more interesting than publications on customs and local dress! I looked for and found something like this, but there’s not much and what there is, is sketchy. Sincerely, G. Puccini Torre del Lago, 10 January, 1902 Japanese music was not easy to find in Italy around 1900. As Puccini was not satisfied with the available music, he contacted the Belgian musicologist Gaston Knosp, who was in Viet Nam at the time and was able to help with information on Japanese music. Puccini also met Oyama Hisako, the wife of the Japanese ambassador to Italy, in September
1902. She sang some melodies for him, which he noted down. She also advised the composer about some linguistic errors in the libretto, although this had no effect. Oyama Hisako also obtained recordings of Japanese music for Puccini, although these reached him too late for his work. Other sources of inspiration were performances by the theatre troupe centred on Sada Yacco, which Puccini saw in Milan in early 1902. They gave Puccini an impression not only of music played on original instruments but also of Japanese dance and theatre. In the opinion of musicologist Arthur Groos, the latter had the greatest influence on Madama Butterfly, although this was based on a misunderstanding. The troupe presented severely shortened versions of well-known Kabuki plays, taking into account the ability to accept these of European audiences who neither understood Japanese nor were familiar with the mimic and gestural signs of this form of theatre. There was accordingly little speech in the performances, the action focused on combat, dance and ritual suicide, with the latter arousing particular interest in European audiences. The result was a distorted impression of Japanese theatre. Many European visitors felt it was coarse and primitive and assumed that in Japanese theatre all conflicts led very quickly to a fatal end. When Puccini returned from his visit to Sada Yacco’s troupe, he was convinced of the need to shorten the planned opera drastically and get to the protagonist’s ritual suicide faster. He persisted in the face of protest by his librettists in dropping the planned third act at the American consulate. On 16 November 1902 he wrote to his publisher Giulio Ricordi: “the
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OLIVER LÁNG
MADAMA BUTTERFLY AT THE VIENNA STATE OPERA The year is 1910. The German translation of John Luther Long’s Butterfly novella is published for the first time. The young Viennese writer Marianne Trebisch-Stein has carefully translated it from English. In her foreword, she enthuses about the “colourful, lively images” of the original, and the reader is also presented with the western, conventional image of Japan. We learn, among other things, that “family means much more there than here,” and: “Japanese women very rarely cry.” And for those particularly interested, there is a glossary at the end of the book with brief explanations of Japanese culture, from Musume to Fusuma. But the perception of Japan in Vienna has now become more acute and multi-layered, reinforced by the highly publicised Russo-Japanese War. While some still cling to the conventional image, for example at folk festivals à la Japan, others firmly resist a clichéd portrayal of the country. The liberal Viennese newspaper Zeit was outraged by the kitschy depictions: “the Japanese, the real people, not the Japanese SONYA YONCHEVA as CIO-CIO-SAN
on stage, are vexed by this theatrical Japan, which for all of Europe, with the exception of a few connoisseurs, is the only real Japan. One must ask oneself how it is that this operetta Japan has so completely displaced the real Japan in the European consciousness.” However, in 1910 interest in the translation of the novella remains modest; by now, Butterfly means Puccini, and the Viennese have been familiar with this Butterfly for some time. Starting in 1900, newspapers begin to circulate information that slowly becomes more specific about a corresponding opera by the composer; from 1902, people in Vienna have exact knowledge of this piece. The première in Milan in February 1904 is followed with great interest, and reports of the première’s failure are very detailed. “Puccini repeated himself musically,” says the Neue Freie Presse, “the motifs of his Madama Butterfly can all be found in his earlier operas, and it is not without reason that on the evening of the performance a voice from one of the box seats called out: “this is musical humbug!” Never-
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