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Madame Butterfly, Story Origins

(Compiled September, 1996)

Story Origins

The Victorian period was a time when gentlemen (and sometimes ladies) of leisure embarked on adventurous escapades around the world. Many of these travelers were avid communicators, writing letters, articles, and keeping journals of their travels. All these personal interpretations of what they witnessed combined to create exotic images of distant lands for those remaining at home. Novels, plays, ballets and operettas were set in foreign locations. One of the last countries to be opened to the West was Japan. In 1854 Commodore Perry concluded his treaty with Japan, and quickly it became a must for travelers.

For example, Lafcadio Hearn, the half-Greek, half-Irish journalist and adventurer, led an impoverished career in Ireland and the United States before arriving in Japan in 1890. He became infatuated with the country, married a Japanese bride, changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo and eventually became a Japanese citizen. Over 15 years his writings, such as Japan, an Attempt at an Interpretation (1904), became popular and were printed in several European languages. He exalted Japan at the expense of the West and helped contribute to the image of Japan as a land of aesthetic accomplishment, peopled with charming, graceful - and complacent - women.

Japan's exotic allure contributed to a vast body of popular literature and fashion. "Japonisme" was the trend in late 19th and early 20th century Europe. Japanese gardens and interior design became in vogue. Whistler, Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, to name a few, drew inspiration from Japanese art and culture. The sense of romance and intrigue fully infiltrated the common imagery of foreign countries.

Exoticism is not too removed from sensualism, so certain Japanese customs such as mixed-bathing and Geisha-houses easily connected into stories of Western man conquering Japanese girl.

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Pierre Loti was the nom de plume of Julien Viaud (1850 - 1923), a French author of novels mostly set in exotic places visited during his career as a naval officer. In 1887 Loti wrote Madame Chrysantheme which set the fashion for stories with a Japanese setting. Loti had actually been to Japan and had a greater sense of the reality of the place than many other writers. His main character, Loti, a naval officer, has two objectives for his stay in Japan: to get a tattoo and to acquire a temporary Japanese wife. The tattoo is easily come by and pleasing; the "wife" is a somewhat more complicated story. It was common practice at the time in Japanese treaty ports for girls, often from rural communities, to be hired or sold to city traders for employment as temporary wives. Foreigners were able to look them over, make a selection and negotiate a price. In a straight commercial deal with no romance, Loti acquires a wife ('O-kiku-san', Miss Chrysanthemum) whom he finds tiresome and cares little for, except for when she shows interest in his friend, Yves. In essence he would gladly be rid of her and makes many disparaging remarks about her and the Japanese in general. When the time comes for Loti to leave Japan, O-kiku makes a big scene of crying and begging him not to leave which, of course, he must. Having forgotten something at the house, Loti returns to the touching scene to find O-kiku counting her money and waiting for her next 'husband'.

This story was made into an opera by Messager in 1893 and was successful for a few decades. Sir Frederick Ashton also choreographed a ballet of this story in 1955.

 

In 1898 the short story Madame Butterfly, by lawyer/writer John Luther Long, appeared in the Century Magazine for January. According to Long his sister had met the real Butterfly's grown son, Tom Glover, in Nagasaki. She learnt that Butterfly's 'husband' had been a British merchant, and her attempted suicide had failed.

Lieutenant Pinkerton is, in his words, 'banished to the Asiatic station' from the Mediterranean. Opportunistically, he engages a marriage broker to find him a house and a wife, Madame Butterfly. He keeps the less attractive side of his arrangements from her but does convert her to Christianity and banishes her relatives from their lives. Butterfly falls in love with Pinkerton who promises, untruly, to return "when the robins nest again." In the meantime Butterfly has a child she names Trouble - meaning Joy. When Pinkerton returns to Nagasaki with his American wife, Adelaide, he does not bother to return to see Butterfly. Adelaide does, however, seek her out and discovers the child, whom she wishes to have for her own. Butterfly attempts suicide, to die with honor, as Pinkerton has taken everything that is precious to her. Suzuki, the maid, cleverly pushes the child into the room, pinching him to make sure he cries. The next day the house is empty when Adelaide returns for the child.

This Butterfly is obviously a different type of character than the rather coarse Chrysantheme.

Long received much criticism for his unfavorable depiction of a U.S. officer.

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David Belasco (1853-1931) may only be remembered as a footnote to dance history as having at one time employed American modern dance pioneer, Ruth St Denis, in music hall productions. He actually inserted the "St." into her name. However, the Broadway impresario and writer wrote the play of Madame Butterfly to fill out an evening featuring the farce Naughty Anthony which premiered March 5, 1900 at the Herald Square Theater, New York. Featuring Blanche Bates as Cho-Cho-San, this one act play scored a great public success. Apart from beginning at the point when Pinkerton has already been gone two years, the play closely follows the story of Long's original. However, Belasco believed there would be more drama if Butterfly succeeded in killing herself. Then Pinkerton would arrive in time to remorsefully cradle the dying body. Adelaide is renamed Kate. Belasco also took a big theatrical risk by taking 14 minutes for Butterfly to stand stationary waiting for Pinkerton as a lighting effect showed the passing of the night. It was a success.

Later in the same year Belasco's play was presented in London at the Duke of York's Theatre, this time on the program with Jerome K. Jerome's Miss Nobbs. Puccini was in London for the premiere of Tosca at Covent Garden and saw the play on opening night. Even without fully understanding the dialogue, Puccini was so moved by the play he immediately knew he wanted to create an opera of the story and rushed backstage to meet Belasco.

Puccini turned to Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giocosa (Boheme and Tosca) for his libretto for Madame Butterfly. The first act of the opera, Pinkerton's arrival in Japan and setting up house with Cio-Cio-San, is basically their creation. It follows closely the Belasco character of Pinkerton as coarse, rude and patronizing. His character is modified in Act 2 with an extended aria showing his remorse at having to leave Butterfly, and it is Sharpless who urges him to leave. In the play it was Pinkerton who gave Sharpless money to ‘pay off’ Butterfly. By singing in fluid Italian, Butterfly is finally freed from the pidgin English she had spoken in versions thus far.

Between the opera's premiere in 1904 and its presentation in Paris in 1906 several changes took place. Most of Pinkerton's slurs of the Japanese were removed, and he became a more likeable and more conventional opera tenor. Kate too was softened. Originally sharing her husband's disdain for the local people, she changes to a sympathetic and compassionate lady who no longer confronts Butterfly but waits outside in the garden. This puts Butterfly in less contrast to the Western protagonists.

As an opera, Madama Butterfly is a staple of even the most innovative opera houses and has been seen practically everywhere opera can be seen. Each director has placed his or her own mark to put on it. An unusual example is Ken Russell's staging for the 1993 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC. It is set in Nagasaki in the late 30s, Cio Cio San is clearly a prostitute who has opium dreams of giant hamburgers and bottles of ketchup, longing for all things American. The opera ends with the bomb exploding over Nagasaki, after which the stage is filled with the corporate logos of modern Japan - Sony, Honda, Mitsubishi. In his final statement, Russell suggests that perhaps Butterfly's side of the cultural conflict was the winner.

Film versions of Madam Butterfly include a 1932 "modernized" Hollywood version of Belasco's play, with Sylvia Sidney and Cary Grant. The opera on film appeared in 1955 in an Italian/Japanese production with Butterfly played by a Japanese actress dubbed by an Italian soprano. In 1996 Sony Classical distributed a French sponsored film sung in Italian with English subtitles. It was directed by Frederic Mitterand (nephew of the president) with the Orchestre de Paris conducted by James Conlon of the Met.

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Madama Butterfly also lives on today in the musical Miss Saigon where Pinkerton has completed his transformation to a sensitive Marine, Chris and the action is transposed to the Viet Nam war. He now voluntarily comes back for the child as opposed to the earlier versions where Pinkerton only returns because of his assignments, and in Long's version, where he never revisits Butterfly herself.

 

David Henry Hwang has also taken a step forward in the confusion as to who is who in his very successful play and movie M. Butterfly. In his version the Westerner is once again French and it is he who takes his life as the only honorable escape from public betrayal. It is also said to be based on a true story, that of a low level French diplomat.

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Bibliography

Puccini

Puccini: A Critical Biography / Carner Duckworth 1974

Puccini: Keeper of the Seal / Greenfield London 1981

Puccini, The Man and His Music / Weaver 1977

 

Madame Chrysantheme

Decca Book of Ballet / Ed. David Drew Decca 1958

Madame Chrysantheme / Loti 1887

 

Madam Butterfly

6 Plays by David Belasco / Belasco

Madam Butterfly, Madama Butterfly Opera Guide, Riverrun Press 1984

Ballet Review - Dance and Dancers, June 1979

Ballet Review - Dance Magazine, February 1993

Ballet Review - Dance Magazine, December 1994

Ballet Review - Dance Magazine, July 1995

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