two madams
the blindfold
by Douglas Messerli
Luigi
Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (libretto), based on the play by David Belasco and
the story by John Luther Long, Giacomo Puccini (composer) Madama Butterfly / the production I saw was a recast in high
definition of the Metropolitan Opera production on Saturday, March 7, 2009 with
Patricia Racette, Maria Zifchak, Marcello Giordani, and Dwayne Croft
Nearly
anyone who has seen an opera knows the story of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Having fallen in love with the dashing American
Navy Lieutenant Pinkerton, the fifteen-year-old Cio-Cio San marries him,
despite the fact that in doing so she must give up her own family and friends.
With Yankee haughtiness and a sense of superiority, Pinkerton scoffs at the
American consul's advice that Cio-Cio San is taking the marriage seriously, and
soon after, leaves her behind as he sails off to America and, ultimately, a
"real" wife.
Meanwhile, Cio-Cio San trusts that eventually he will return, singing
her famed aria "Un bel di," in which she describes one beautiful day
when a ship will sail into the harbor, returning Pinkerton to her. Meanwhile,
Cio-Cio, courted by local men such as the wealthy Prince Yamadori, refuses to
give up her so-called "American" marriage and ardently denies their
insistence that Pinkerton has left her for good.
The consul, Sharpless, has been given the
difficult task of reading a letter from Pinkerton to Cio-Cio, reporting that he
has been married, and will not return, but she, so delighted to hear any word
from her husband, cannot comprehend what he is attempting to tell her, and when
Sharpless tries to explain the facts in a more outright manner, she produces
her and Pinkerton's son whom she is certain will draw Pinkerton back to her.
Pinkerton, in fact, has already returned
to Nagasaki, and has no intention of visiting Cio-Cio. When he does hear of the
child's existence, he, his wife, and Sharpless, convince Cio-Cio's servant
Suzuki, to break the news that Pinkerton and his new wife will adopt the son.
Finally, Cio-Cio, who has been blinded
throughout the entire opera to the truth, has her eyes opened, realizing, in
horror, her delusional condition. She asks Pinkerton, a man so selfish that he
has refused even to face her himself, to return so that she may offer up the
child. But we also know that she intends to leave him her own body, committing
ritual suicide. Who could not be moved by Patricia Racette's dramatically
convincing performance? The Lithuanian-born American next to us—who had never
before attended a Met video performance—was in tears, as were Howard and I.
Belasco the original playwright and
storyteller John Luther Long, upon whose work Puccini based his opera, were
quite prescient in this fin de siècle
piece, establishing a type, the ugly American, which has remained in place for
all those years since, particularly in the context of the Korean, Viet Nam,
Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In Puccini's hands, the dichotomy between the
all-consuming Yankee and the self-sacrificing Japanese maiden could not have
made clearer.
Yet, one can only recognize that it is
Cio-Cio San's propensity for self-sacrifice is as much a problem in this
relationship as has been Pinkerton's greed and disdain of her life. In her
absurd innocence, she has been blinded not only to the impossibility that she
could be recognized as an American wife, but has forgotten who she herself is
and how her traditions and behavior conspire to permit the Pinkerton's of the
world to prey upon such youths.
Puccini
poignantly points up this fact by having her son, whom she has sent out to
play, wander into sight just as she is about to draw the knife. To protect him,
she blindfolds the child, sending him on his way. But in doing this she merely
reiterates her own condition all along. Singing of her hope that her son will
remember her at the very moment that she is about to disappear from his life,
we can only perceive that were he to do so, it could only bring him great pain
for the rest of his days. In Anthony Minghella's Metropolitan Opera production
Howard and I saw, the child, "Sorrow"/"Trouble" was played
by a Bunraku-like puppet, manipulated by three hooded assistants, which
visually restated the child's future sense of emptiness, his destiny, perhaps,
to join in the world of hollow bodies.
Accordingly, although the opera ends with
a corpse upon the stage, we know that it is already a disappearing thing,
representing as it does a way of living that will inevitably be replaced by the
avaricious gluttony of the survivors.
Los Angeles,
March 28, 2009
fin de siècle
by Douglas Messerli
Luigi
Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (libretto), based on the play by David Belasco and
the story by John Luther Long, Giacomo Puccini (composer) Madama Butterfly / the production I saw was by the LAOpera,
performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, on December 9, 2012
Although
there are many good things about this Los Angeles Opera production, based on an
earlier San Francisco Opera version—including the singing of Milena Kitic as
Suzuki, the ever-resilient bass-baritone of Eric Owens (some of his tones lost,
however, to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s unpredictable acoustics), and the
basically excellent performances of Oksana Dyka (as Cio-Cio-Sun) and Bradon
Jovanovich (as Pinkerton)—it would be simply unfair to compare this with the
brilliant Anthony Minghella Metropolitan Opera production I saw in 2009.
Although she has a strong soprano voice, Dyka simply is not a good match for
the fragile, butterfly-like character. Singing at the top of her voice, one
could certainly hear Dyka’s lyrical tunings, but she hardly seemed like a
humble, obedient 15-year old which Patricia Racette more thoroughly convinced
us she was. I look forward to hearing, at some point, Dyka’s Aida or Tosca.
The heavy
reliance upon shifting screens may certainly be appropriate to the period, but
the design has somehow aged, and the placement of Pinkerton’s Westernized bed
in the midst of this spare set was jarring. Jovanovich also has a fine, strong
voice which he used to great purpose in the LAOpera production of The Birds in 2009. But here he seemed,
at times, to be trying to sing out against his powerfully-voiced wife. But
these are surely quibbles about performances that the audience apparently quite
enjoyed—as did Howard and I. I might just note that the usually
“jump-up-to-applaud” Los Angeles audience remained mostly seated at opera’s end.
What struck me most while watching this
production was just how connected to the works of the fin de siècle was Puccini’s 1904 opera. Beginning in the 1880s,
writers such as Oscar Wilde, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Arthur Schnitzler openly
challenged earlier moralities, and the characters of their work not only
dismiss more conventional behavior, but reject previously moral values with
clear hostility. Consider Bertha Garlan, the heroine of Schnitzler’s book of
the same name. Bertha, who has lived most of her life in quiet domesticity
becomes bored and impatient after the death of her husband, and—seemingly
encouraged by a woman friend who Bertha sees as open-minded, slightly-libertine
figure—attempts, on a trip to Vienna, to strike up a sexual relationship with a
previous acquaintance, now a famous musician. The musician is all too ready to
accept the sexual part of the relationship, but rejects any further commitment,
leaving Bertha a nearly-destroyed woman who has suddenly behaved licentiously
near the end of a life which she has previously lived with restraint and
motherly affection. In Schnitzler play, “Hands Around,” men and women strike up
brief affairs, each figure moving on, in turn, to another, until the sexual
interludes have gone full circle. Wilde’s Importance
of Being Ernest proceeds out of a world dominated by lying (the major
character participating in what he describes as “bunburying” his way through
life) into a society where love seems to be based on one’s first name.
Huysman’s Des Esseintes lives his entire life in the delectation of special
foods and perfumes, reading obscure texts, and other sensate experiences.
So too does Puccini’s “coffee-house
girl,” innocent though she may be, take up with an affair with a foreigner,
delighted with his ultimate proposal of marriage. But Pinkerton, as we know, is
a cad, not at all intending to keep his vow, and perceiving his Japanese wife
of fifteen years of age (it would be hard to imagine presenting such a child
abuser on stage today) simply as something to be toyed with. As he tells the
only truly moral figure of the opera, the consul Sharpless, someday he will have
a “real” marriage with a American woman.
As callow as he be seen today, Pinkerton
was little different from almost any major fin
de siècle figure, men and women willing to throw over everything for a life
of sensual pleasures. Despite her utter innocence, so too in Cio-Cio-San
willing to marry not only outside her culture, attempting to redefine herself
in terms of what American men may like, but is insistent about abandoning her
own religion and cultural values in order to explore the “pure joy” she feels
from her love with Pinkerton—despite the ultimate rejection of her by all of
her relatives including the powerful Bonze. Like Bertha Garlan, Madame
Butterfly may have lived a life beyond reproach (much of that depends on how
one defines a Geisha), but she is now determined to throw all that away for a
man to whom she is immediately attracted (as she admits, she has fallen in love
upon first sight). And, although, she describes herself as humble and modest,
patient as she explains her real and symbolic climb up to the hill to the house
where Pinkerton intends to “install” her, she is also determined to live a
better life, presumably in the United States where she delusionally believes
her husband will eventually take her and their son.
Puccini himself lived a sexually open
life, living with and rearing a son with his mistress, Elvira, while
simultaneously having other affairs with younger women such as Corinna, trysts
he described as “cultivating my little gardens.” During the writing of Madama Butterfly the jealous Elvira
insisted he marry her, in response to which Corinna threatened to reveal his
love letters to the world. In short, the composer was not so very different
from his characters, particularly if one sees Corinna as a kind innocent in the
whole affair.
In
short, one of the reasons why the audience can emotionally bear the tragedy of
Butterfly’s death is not only that we know Butterfly lives in a world of
denial—a world of how things should be
instead of how they are—but that, despite how despicably Pinkerton has treated
her, refusing to even admit his American marriage to her face, she too has been
caught up in the liberating spirit of her age. And although all those around
her insist that she face the truth, Butterfly stubbornly refuses to admit the
consequences of her choices.
Based on a true-life figure, whose affair
with Pinkerton probably occurred in 1892 or 1893, Butterfly herself was seeking
experiences outside the range of normative moral behavior of the time,
experiences which, while the fin de
siècle writers may have often advocated, also warned, just as Sharpless warns
Pinkerton, might lead to dangerous consequences. Unlike Wagner’s heroes whose
pure love for one another is betrayed by others and the gods, Puccini’s heroes
have only their own desires, selfishness, and self-deceptions to blame for
their fates.
Los Angeles,
December 10, 2012
