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‘Madama Butterfly’ a Challenge in a Politically Correct World
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Tuesday, February 6, 2018
 

BY KAREN BOSSICK

It’s one of the most popular operas of all time.

But “Madama Butterfly” had one of the most disastrous openings in the history of opera when it premiered in 1904 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

It wasn’t well rehearsed—Giacomo Puccini had scarcely finished it before it took the stage, and the singers didn’t know the score. The audience hissed as they realized that some of the music sounded too much like that of Puccini’s “La Boheme.”

And then they heckled the lead, who was rumored to be having an affair, for looking pregnant.

“Someone kept hollering from the audience, ‘She’s pregnant! She’s pregnant!’ ” said Mark Junkert, general director of Opera Idaho.

All has certainly has changed over the past hundred years. Today “Madama Butterfly” is one of the most frequently performed operas. And Opera Idaho will add to that number as it performs it for the sixth time in its 45-year history this coming week.

Opera Idaho will perform the semi-staged production with costumes, props and piano accompaniment at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10, at the Church of the Big Wood. Tickets range from $18 to $48 and are available online at www.operaidaho.org.

The company will offer two fully staged performances at The Morrison Center in Boise on Feb. 16 and Feb. 18. Dean Williamson, once the music director for Sun Valley Opera and now the music director for Nashville Opera, will conduct the orchestra during the Boise performances.

“The opera is popular and our audience has grown a lot in the last 10 years. There are a lot of people on our mailing list who weren’t on it the last time we did it,” Junkert said.

The opera tells the story of Cio-Cio-San, a trusting and innocent young geisha who falls in love with an American Navy lieutenant named B.F. Pinkerton, only to be abandoned by him. She remains faithful, holding out hope that he will come back in spring with the robins. But tragedy ensues, despite the best efforts of her loyal servant Suzuki and Sharpless, a sympathetic American consul.

After its disastrous beginnings, Puccini went back to the drawing board and took out most of the part involving the wife of the American lieutenant. He made a few other changes, as well, and the opera had its second premiere in Russia. Puccini ended up revising it seven times.”

“In the end, the opera succeeds because of the beauty of the music,” Junkert said. “Occasionally, someone performs the original 1904 version. We’ll be doing the fifth version, which is the one that most opera companies do.”

That said, it’s not easy to stage “Madama Butterfly” in today’s politically correct world.

Seattle Opera’s recent attempt to stage it created a furor among the Asian community until the opera company engaged the community with conversations and workshops.

Opera Idaho’s upcoming production has three people of color chosen through blind casting, Junkert said. But it has no Japanese singers.

“Throughout history there have been few Asian leads. The quest on is: Is it demeaning to Asians? And  where do you draw the line? It used to be opera companies would put makeup on their performers to make them look Asian. It’s only been since 2015 that the Metropolitan Opera changed its policy of using dark makeup to look white performers look black. And that came after a huge outcry.”

Opera Idaho had to grapple with just such a scenario, Junkert said, when they performed “Amahl and the Night Visitors” a couple months ago.

“In it a little boy says, ‘There are three kings out there and one is black.’ We decided to leave the line in because that’s what was written, but we did not darken the character.”

While she’s not Japanese, Opera Idaho’s “Madama Butterfly” will star Vanessa Isiguen, a North Carolina native whose family is of Cuban and Filipino descent.

The lead role is a difficult one because the character is on stage nearly the entire performance. It’s been performed by a lot of famous singers, including Maria Callas. Michelle Detweiler, who makes her home in Boise, will perform the role of Suzuki.

The two women will be joined by Chaz’men Williams-Ali  and Kenneth Overton as the American lieutenant and Sharpless, both of whom are African-American..

“Of course, in 1904 there would have been no lieutenant in the U.S. Navy who was black, nor would there have been a black consul,” Junkert noted.

Director Helena Binder, who has directed imaginative productions for operas in New York, Dallas, Minnesota, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Portland, is going with a very traditional staging.

Puccini wrote the opera after seeing a play based on a short story written in 1898 by American John Luther Long and a semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel “Madama Chrysantheme” by Pierre Loti.

“It was white European dudes telling story about a culture they know nothing about . The young woman in the opera could not have been a geisha because geishas were older women who were trained to serve,” Junkert said.

Fernando Menendez, the marketing and education manager for the company, concurred:

“The story is not the most accurate. But the story is still very much relevant in that we all suffer breakups. We all suffer loss. And this sort of thing probably did happen when Americans fell in love with young Japanese women and then returned home, leaving the others behind. The way Puccini tells the story is very moving.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Giacomo Puccini was not a prolific composer of operas. While other composers wrote as many as 80 operas over their lifetime, Puccini wrote one every four to five years.

Still, he wrote three of the most performed operas in history: “La boheme,” “Tosca” and “Madama Butterfly.” Another, “Turandot,” is also considered among the important operas played as standards.

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