Puccini’s finest achievement – that rises to high tragedy
Madama Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini, 1904)
Perhaps ranking as Puccini’s finest overall achievement, Madama Butterfly has exerted enormous influence not only on account of its exquisite music and spin-offs such as Miss Saigon, but also because of its pioneering treatment of American cultural imperialism and the question of interracial marriage. Although it has sometimes been derided as sentimental and even offensive in its caricature of Japanese culture, it rises in a strong performance to high tragedy – an indictment of exploitative male callousness, of course, but also a powerful psychological study of obstinate self-delusion and the capacity of human beings in love to deny realities that confront them.
Plot
While stationed in Nagasaki in the late 19th century, the American naval lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton negotiates a “marriage” to Cio-cio-san, an innocent 15-year-old whose family has fallen on hard times. He is consumed with lust, albeit also genuinely touched by the girl’s charm, but has no intention of making their relationship permanent. She, however, falls totally in love, and believes that he has made a lifetime commitment.
Pinkerton leaves Japan for the USA, making vague promises to return. Cio-cio-san takes to American ways, renaming herself Madama Butterfly. Time passes: she has a three-year-old son as a result of the affair and struggles to make ends meet.
When Pinkerton finally does return, he brings his new American wife with him and announces that he wants to take custody of his son. Reverting to her ancestors’ code of honour, Butterfly performs hara-kiri.
Background
The opera has its distant roots in a traveller’s tale about a Scottish whisky exporter whose geisha bride killed herself when he abandoned her. But Puccini was more directly inspired by a play by David Belasco he had seen (without understanding a word of English) on a visit to London. Composition took several years and the first performance in 1904 was a disastrous flop, leading Puccini to make several major changes. Tightened and revised, it triumphed at its second production and has remained enormously popular ever since.
Commentary
Following in the wake of Manon Lescaut, La Bohème and Tosca, this score shows a new maturity and sophistication in Puccini’s style, developing an idiom that wonderfully evokes a Japanese atmosphere while remaining in the mainstream tradition of lushly romantic Italian opera. The storytelling is flawless, with the
It is a powerful study of the capacity of human beings in love to deny reality
subsidiary characters being as sharply etched as the principals.
The highlight of the first act is the rapturous yet delicate wedding-night duet between Butterfly and Pinkerton; the second act includes Butterfly’s lyrical outburst “Un bel dì vedremo” as she fantasises Pinkerton’s return, as well as the flower duet and nocturnal humming chorus that mark Butterfly’s lonely vigil after she hears Pinkerton’s ship has docked and awaits his arrival.
In performance
Butterfly is one of the great roles in the soprano repertory – extremely long (she is rarely off the stage after the opening scene), but so sensitively written and paced that it is not vocally exhausting. Emotionally, it’s another matter – and if a singer isn’t left drained by conveying Butterfly’s intense feelings and complex developing personality, then her performance will be lacking. Another difficulty is physical: quite aside from the fact that Butterfly is presented as a diminutive teenager, today’s heightened sensitivity surrounding the depiction of other races means that many opera houses will only cast Asian sopranos.
Despite some beautiful music in the first act duet and his aria of aching remorse “Addio fiorito asil”, Pinkerton is an ungrateful role that tenors dislike – not least because it has become standard practice to greet him with pantomime-villain booing at his curtain call, however expert his singing.
Productions
Productions are generally quite restrained in interpretation: the divide is between stagings like Annilese Miskimmon’s for Glyndebourne or Tim Albery’s for Opera North that try to inject a note of sober realism into their presentation of 19th-century Japan, and those like Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s for Covent Garden or Anthony
Minghella’s for English National Opera and the Met that see it more as a pretext for a floor show of exotic kimonos.
Recordings
One audio recording stands head and shoulders beyond all others: on EMI Classics, Renata Scotto is simply incomparable in the title role, supported by Carlo Bergonzi as the most seductive of Pinkertons and superb conducting from John Barbirolli. An honourable runner-up features Scotto’s great rival Mirella Freni as Cio-cio-san, Luciano Pavarotti as Pinkerton and Herbert von Karajan’s smoothly expert conducting (Decca).
On DVD, two versions can be warmly recommended: Jean-pierre Ponnelle’s studio filmed version reunites Freni with Karajan (Deutsche Grammophon); and Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s beautiful if bloodless staging for Covent Garden is lovingly conducted by Antonio Pappano, with Ermonela Jaho a heart-rending Butterfly (Opus Arte).