The Atlanta Opera presents a powerful “Madama Butterfly”

Mark Gresham | 10 NOV 2022

Seven years before the beginning of the American Civil War (1861–1865), the United States and the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan signed the Convention of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, ending Japan’s 220-year-old policy of national isolation (鎖国, sakoku) by opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships. Also known as the Kanagawa Treaty (神奈川条約, Kanagawa Jōyaku), the Convention was the result of the “Black Ships” of the United States Navy, under Commodore Matthew C. Perry, using “diplomacy by force” to open Japan to the outside world. It also established the position of an American consul in Japan and gave rise to similar treaties with other Western powers.

The Boshin War (戊辰戦争, Boshin Sensō), Japan’s own Civil War (1868–1869), led to a centralized state unified under the emperor, known as the Meiji Restoration, which began to adopt Western political, judicial, and military institutions. During this Meiji period (1868–1912), the Empire of Japan emerged as an industrialized world power and the most developed nation in Asia. But it also developed an interest in expanding its sphere of influence through military conflict.

Noted public intellectual Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote Leaving Asia (脫亞論, Datsu-A Ron), an influential 1895 essay arguing that Japan should orient itself toward the “civilized countries of the West,” leaving behind its “hopelessly backward” Asian neighbors, Korea and China. It encouraged Japan’s economic and technological rise, but perhaps also the foundations for later Japanese colonialism in the region.

By the time Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924) wrote the original two-act version of his opera Madama Butterfly in 1904, Japanese-American diplomatic reltions had already been in full swing for half a century. And yet, for Puccini and most other Europeans at the time, both Japan and America remained exotic and culturally fascinating faraway places.

Witness to that Puccini’s next opera, La fanciulla del West, set in a California mining camp as example, but also the fictional character of the rich young Texan, Quincy Morris, in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.

Another exotic but historical character of the time who developed a “cowboy” persona was Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), born the same year as Puccini and served as President of the United States from 1901–1909. “Teddy” Roosevelt believed fervently in building the country’s naval strength, particularly the construction of battleships, and that the United States should become the dominant power in the Pacific, where he considered the growing military and naval strength of Japan a threat to U.S. interests in the region.

In 1907, when Puccini made his final revisions to the opera in a fifth version (now the standard), Roosevelt was preparing to launch the Great White Fleet, a group of 16 U.S. Navy battleships, plus smaller escort vessels, on an 18-month peacetime journey around the globe. One of the goals was to deter a potential war with Japan, as tensions were high. The fleet would make port in Yokohama, Japan, one of the stops on the third leg of the voyage, in October 1908.

All of this makes the vital point that the story of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is perfectly contemporary with its times and the news and world events surrounding the composer at the turn of the 20th century.

This particular production of Madama Butterfly by The Atlanta Opera serves that feeling of relevant immediacy without trying to update the story to the 21st century. Nor does it feel in any way antique. The human elements are timeless, brought out thoroughly by the exceptionally superb acting by the cast of excellent singers under Tomer Zvulun’s stage direction and marvelously supported by the Atlanta Opera Orchestra led by conductor Timothy Myers.

Nina Yoshida Nelson as Suzuki, Yasko Sato as Cio-Cio San, Abigail Hale as Sorrow, and Craig Colclough as Sharpless (credit: Ken Howard)

One could not ask for a better Cio-Cio San than Japanese soprano Yasko Sato (佐藤康子). A Butterfly expert, she authored a work in Japan that discusses Puccini’s revisions in the score and the consequent development of the Cio-Cio San character. But most important is her insightful performance, which is captivating. “Un bel dì vedremo” (“One fine day we’ll see”), the opera’s most famous aria (and one of the most famous soprano arias in the world), early in the second act, is a natural highlight for Sasko, where Cio-Cio San sings to her maid, Suzuki (mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen), of her faith that Pinkerton’s ship will appear and return him to her after their years apart.

Tenor Gianluca Terranova portrays U.S. Navy Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. While the libretto describes Cio-Cio San as 15 years old, there is no direct clue about Pinkerton’s age. We can guess that as a young Lieutenant, Pinkerton is likely in his mid-twenties. In the beginning, he comes across as a bit of an overconfident swaggering cad. That piece of Pinkerton’s personality collapses in the Third Act aria, “Addio fiorito asil di letizia e d’amor” (“Farewell flowery refuge of joy and love”), when he realizes what he has done and decides that it would be too painful to say goodbye to Butterfly directly.

An essential fulcrum in the story is Sharpless (sung by baritone Craig Colclough), the United States consul at Nagasaki and Pinkerton’s friend.

Acts of diplomacy in navigating conflicts between individuals can be as tricky and treacherous as those between sovereign nations. Sometimes too much or too little intervention impact the outcome. Errors of judgment can lead to catastrophic consequences. In the case of Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San, Sharpless concludes he should have intervened more strongly as an intermediary to avert tragedy, despite his early cautions to Pinkerton that his attitude is irresponsible and unfair.

One can imagine, however, that a geisha like Cio-Cio San would have read or at least encountered the ideas in Fukuzawa’s Leaving Asia. In addition to being versed in music and arts, young geisha were expected to be able to converse intellectually with their clients, and Leaving Asia was popular. It was a flowering of public discourse on the direction of Japan.

The discourse makes itself evident throughout the opera. Marriages like that of Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San are brokered, in this case by the matchmaker Goro (tenor Julius Ahn), who conspicuously wears a western bowler hat.

Prince Yamadori (baritone Leroy Davis) could be a Japanese parallel of Pinkerton with his status in the Kazoku under the Meiji peerage system for what had once been the old court nobility. Cio-Cio San rejected his offer of marriage, which, under Japanese law, allowed a husband to divorce his wife easily by simple abandonment, opting instead for the belief that her marriage to Pinkerton, under American law, would be more permanent.

Yasko Sato as Cio-Cio San. (credit: Ken Howard)

Cio-Cio San secretly adopts the religion of Pinkerton but is discovered quickly and rejected by her family. She adopts America as her new country and proudly displays the American flag. In short, she desires to become American, which would have been controversial enough by itself on both sides of the Pacific, although it intertwines deeply with her genuine love for Pinkerton. It’s about what Cio-Cio San herself rejects as much as what she desires, in addition to how she herself is rejected.

The relationship’s most significant complication, which brings the opera to its final tragic conclusion, is Sorrow (played by Abigail Hale), Cio-Cio San’s child by Pinkerton. Pinkerton and his American wife, Kate (mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp), want to take Sorrow away to be raised in America. Thinking they are doing “what’s best for the child,” they take away the last of Cio-Cio San’s honor and connection to Pinkerton, and in her final despair, she commits suicide. A distressed Pinkerton returns to her but too late, as the stage and set dramatically fill with blood-red light, then abruptly goes black.

“All’s fair in love and war,” says an old English proverb, but the tragedy of Madama Butterfly continues to remind us that is not necessarily so.

Today, Madama Butterfly is the sixth most-performed opera in the world. This production by The Atlanta Opera makes for a most worthy and potent presentation. ■

EXTERNAL LINKS:

• The Atlanta Opera: atlantaopera.org
• Timothy Myers: timothymyers.com
• Tomer Zvulun: tomerzvulun.com
• Yasko Sato (佐藤康子): https://www.yaskosato.com/
• Gianluca Terranova: stagedoor.it/en/Artist/Gianluca%20Terranova
• Nina Yoshida Nelsen: ninayoshidanelsen.com
• Craig Colclough: craigcolclough.com

Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.

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