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Nov. 14 Time and again, we come across arts events we know people want to know about, but we realize we don't know enough to tell them something good. For "Madam a Butterfly," conducted by Keith Lockhart at the Shubert Theatre through Nov. 14, we turned to opera expert and world traveler Max Friedli who sent this in ...
Ever since the Renaissance, Europeans have had a fascination with the exotic. When I grew up, the craze in the German-speaking countries was to read novels about America's Wild Wild West. My favourite author of that time baptised his daughter 'Winnetou.'
No surprise that all the arts should share that fascination. When we ask the natives what they think of our efforts, they find them 'charming and perfectly inaccurate.' Americans are generally amused by Italian Spaghetti Westerns, but when it comes to negative interpretations, such as Michelangelo Antonioni's 'Zabriskie Point' where at the end all of America's fried chickens and refrigerators are blown up in slow motion repeatedly, Europeans don't even dare asking any questions.
The Japanese are quite flattered by ''Madama Butterfly,'' but, as expected, find her quite unbelievable. Had the opera a happy ending, Butterfly could still be alive, having made her first appearance on stage in 1904. Though she would be a very old lady by now indeed, the question lingers why she could not have transferred her love for the hapless US Navy Officer Pinkerton, who was a cad anyway, to their offspring and lived happily ever after, but the conventions of contemporary opera clearly dictated a tragic ending.
There are fellow travellers on the road of interpreting Asia for Europeans, notably Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Mikado,' but that is a frivolous view of Chinese mores seen from a colonial point of view, an 'opereretta' (little opera) closer to today's musical comedy or even burlesque at which no-one could take offense.
With 'Madama Butterfly' composer Giacomo Puccini and two of his librettists had something much more serious in mind, the concepts of culture clash, excessive love, pride, and a sense of honor whose complexity inevitably leads to death.
In Europe we pronounce the title 'Màdàmà Bootterflee' and the modern way of calling her 'Madame' or even 'Madam' doesn't do the intention justice. 'Madama' was rather meant as a title or second first name, nowadays she should be called 'Madonna Butterfly.'
For the opera freak it is a one-woman opera and the entire piece would best be sung by a soprano of the intensity of Maria Callas (or even Barbra Streisand, if ...) as an interior monologue that propels her feelings through the delights of love, loyalty and motherhood to the agonies of loss and the redemption through suicide. The rest is frill.
Ever since the Renaissance, Europeans have had a fascination with the exotic. When I grew up, the craze in the German-speaking countries was to read novels about America's Wild Wild West. My favourite author of that time baptized his daughter "Winnetou."
No surprise that all the arts should share that fascination. When we ask the natives what they think of our efforts, they find them 'charming and perfectly inaccurate.' Americans are generally amused by Italian Spaghetti Westerns, but when it comes to negative interpretations, such as Michelangelo Antonioni's 'Zabriskie Point' where at the end all of America's fried chickens and refrigerators are blown up in slow motion repeatedly, Europeans don't even dare ask any questions.
The Japanese are quite flattered by 'Madama Butterfly,' but, as expected, find her quite unbelievable. Had the opera a happy ending, Butterfly could still be alive, having made her first appearance on stage in 1904. Though she would be a very old lady by now indeed, the question lingers why she could not have transferred her love for the hapless US Navy Officer Pinkerton, who was a cad anyway, to their offspring and lived happily ever after, but the conventions of contemporary opera clearly dictated a tragic ending.
There are fellow travellers on the road of interpreting Asia for Europeans, notably Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Mikado,' but that is a frivolous view of Chinese mores seen from a colonial point of view, an 'opereretta' (little opera) closer to today's musical comedy or even burlesque at which no-one could take offense.
With 'Madama Butterfly' composer Giacomo Puccini and two of his librettists had something much more serious in mind, the concepts of culture clash, excessive love, pride, and a sense of honor whose complexity inevitably leads to death.
In Europe we pronounce the title 'Màdàmà Bootterflee' and the modern way of calling her 'Madame' or even 'Madam' doesn't do the intention justice. 'Madama' was rather meant as a title or second first name, nowadays she should be called 'Madonna Butterfly.'
For the opera freak it is a one-woman opera and the entire piece would best be sung by a soprano of the intensity of Maria Callas (or even Barbra Streisand, if ...) as an interior monologue that propels her feelings through the delights of love, loyalty and motherhood to the agonies of loss and the redemption through suicide. The rest is frill.
Just a chorus would be needed as back-up to re-enforce and intensify the flow of feeling and mood, but the popular taste goes in another direction and wants a show. In fact the opera had initially a problem with the length of its arie and to this day is being criticised for it, though it has become America's most performed opera.
It has a great many entertaining circus elements, but it wouldn't make it as an engaging piece of theatre, not enough action. Pinkerton fathers a boy with a Japanese girl and promises her marriage. He leaves, she takes the promise serious and waits, he ignores the promise and returns three years later with his new American wife. Butterfly, without a fight, gives up the child to the embarrassed and embarrassing Kate Pinkerton and kills herself.
Perhaps there is no other logical solution to Butterfly's predicaments because she is a tarnished angel. Blemished three-fold by the suicide of her father, her gaishahood---a complex position in Japanese society full of contradictions---and the betrayal of her culture by linking herself to an alien. Puccini does not attempt to resolve these handicaps, but let's them stand as mysteries of the Orient to which we have no access. The ideal of honor will likely be the winner in such a combustion of problems and committing suicide is the honorable outcome.
(Max could easily insert here a paragraph on the minor characters, but I'm concerned the piece would become too long.)
The popularity of the opera lies in the beauty of its music from an orchestration mixed with Eastern instruments---It must sound strange to Oriental ears because they stay away from mixing Eastern and Western sounds---and of course in the human voices, particularly Butterfly's and her maid Suzuki's, when they are beautiful.
The focus of the current Boston Lyric Opera production no doubt will be on the conductor's skill. Keith Lockhart is out to prove his versatility, possibly in competition with Boston Symphony's 'real' conductor, James Levine, who has already made his operatic mark at New York's Met and other opera houses. Opera is 'in,' somewhat at the cost of dance, its sheer expensiveness draws people like flies.
'Madama Butterfly' more than many other operas lends itself to two radically different approaches by the conductor. Lockhart may choose to dominate---à la Herbert von Karajan---every move on stage and provide every musical cue and impetus, thus making the stage director all but obsolete. Or he may want to wait it out until the singers are ready, take the cues from them and follow their pacing. This would underscore the turmoil in Butterfly's mind and will affect you, too, unless you have a heart of stone.
Interesting, too, are the different developments the character of Butterfly have taken in the performing arts, such as 'M. Butterfly' which shifts the attention to sexual confusion à la Shakespeare or the gaudy 'Miss Saigon' in which Butterfly is shoved away in favor of the prowess of an American soldier in Vietnam and his helicopter which out drones any anti-Americanism that Puccini had subtly infused into 'Madama Butterfly'.
Puccini considered her his best. Performances: Nov. 8,10,14 at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12 at 3 p.m. Tickets: $117-$33 265 Tremont St. 800-447-7400 |
