DIRECTOR CHALLENGES ‘Madame Butterfly’ STEREOTYPES
“Madame Butterfly” views Japanese culture through a Western lens.
Determined to rinse the yellowface from Puccini’s masterpiece, director Matthew Ozawa is reaching beyond stereotypes.
Ozawa will direct “Madame Butterfly” at the Santa Fe Opera beginning Saturday, June 30. Sopranos Kelly Kaduce and Ana Maria Martinez will share the role.
The Japanese-American opera director has long struggled with the exoticism and caricature inherent in the Puccini classic.
More than a century ago, an abandoned young woman took the stage at Milan’s La Scala and prayed for her American lover’s return. It’s a tragic story of innocence betrayed and of East-West conflict.
The first time Ozawa, the son of a father born in a Wyoming Japanese internment camp, saw “Madame Butterfly,” he couldn’t relate.
“It was always offensive,” he said. “It felt like I was watching cultural appropriation on stage.”
“Part of it is struggling with the issue of yellowface,” he said. But “that’s only one small facet of the issue. It’s really more about the interpretation in my mind.”
In the past, opera companies have painted the faces of their sopranos to make them faux Japanese. For years, Ozawa insisted the lead should be played only by an Asian soprano. But that became impractical in an era of colorblind casting.
Many companies have exoticized the production well beyond its 1904 time period. Japan was a closed country until 1854. It was a very insular nation, Ozawa said.
The opera also exposes questions of ownership. The American sailor Pinkerton buys the 15-year-old CioCio-San for 100 yen for 999 years.
“Anytime, he can cancel the contract and dispose of her,” Ozawa said.
Nagasaki is a poor part of Japan, and its geishas are sexual slaves, he said. Their kimonos are far less elaborate than those of their richer Kyoto neighbors to the north. These women served as temporary wives to the American naval officers.
“She thinks he’s going to come back,” Ozawa said.
“She’s kind of a victim,” Kaduce added. “Certainly, she was a victim in that women had a very submissive role.”
Cio-Cio-San’s father committed suicide, leaving her family virtually no choice but to place her in geisha training.
“I think she’s stuck in a role she can’t get out of,” Kaduce said.
Cio-Cio-San’s family then rejects her when they learn she has begun wearing a Christian cross. Next, Pinkerton returns with an American wife, demanding to take his and CioCio-San’s son stateside with him.
There’s an automatic assumption that the child will be better off in America.
“Butterfly’s been waiting for him for years,” Ozawa said. “She has a kid; she’s wearing Western clothes.” Her suicide will not be exoticized. “I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, she should have seen it coming’,” Ozawa said. “She’s devastated; she’s losing her kid. She has no other recourse. Everyone in the show is accountable for her death.”