Madama Butterfly

The poetic production by the Hollywood director Anthony Minghella, who died in 2008, worked with Japanese stylistic elements and was co-produced by the Metropolitan Opera New York, the English National Opera and the Lithuanian National Theater for Opera and Ballet. Carolyn Choa took over the elaborate new production for the premiere at the Vienna State Opera on September 7, 2020. Choa, who was married to Anthony Minghella, has created choreographies for numerous opera productions and also staged them herself; she received an Olivier Award together with the director for the choreography in Minghella's production of Madama Butterfly.

 

To musically portray Japan in conflict with its opening and westernization forced by the American navy in 1853, Puccini alienated his musical language by enriching it with material from original or mediated Far Eastern sources: In addition to borrowing from transcriptions of Japanese music by Bruckner's pupil Rudolf Dittrich, he used melodies from a music box made in Switzerland for export to China, employed percussion augmented by Japanese instruments and also drew inspiration from a Kabuki theater performance. The exoticism in Puccini's Butterfly score is more than just folkloristic decoration. It stages a critique of colonialism that makes the work fruitful for post-colonial questions and readings.

 

When taking a critical look at exoticist tendencies in Madama Butterfly, one should not forget that Lieutenant Pinkerton also belonged to a foreign culture for Puccini and his initially Italian audience. Just as the Japanese official is introduced with the Japanese anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", today the American national anthem and already the official anthem of the US Navy at the time the opera was written, is played at the mention of the United States, naturally orchestrated in the manner of a brass band. Puccini was particularly interested in depicting the two foreign worlds of Japan and America, which is one of the reasons why an act set in the American embassy was planned. During the work, Puccini wrote to Ricordi that he was trying "to make Mr. F. B. [sic] Pinkerton sing as American as possible" (Ann-Christine Mecke).