Madama Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini). Asmik Grigorian (Butterfly), Royal Opera, Stockholm, 2014
Madama Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini). Asmik Grigorian (Butterfly), Royal Opera, Stockholm, 2014. Photographer: Marcus Gårder. Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND, Royal Opera, Stockholm. 3. Who’s Who Underneath the Kimono? Queer Mysteries of M. Butterfly For the myths of the East, the myths of the West, the myths of men, and the myths of women – these have so saturated our consciousness that truthful contact between nations and lovers can only be the result of heroic effort. Those who prefer to bypass the work involved will remain in a world of surfaces, misperceptions running rampant. This is, to me, the convenient world in which the French diplomat and the Chinese spy lived. This is why, after twenty years, he had learned nothing about his lover, not even the truth of his sex. David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly1 On 11 May 1986, The New York Times published a short article on how a French diplomat and a Jíngjù performer with the Beijing opera had been sentenced to six years in prison on spying charges by the People’s Republic of China. The curious thing about the incident was that it was surrounded by a secret, forbidden love affair, based on sexual misconception. French diplomat Bernard Boursicot, who was accused of revealing classified information while stationed in Beijing, had fallen in love with Chinese actress, Shi Pei Pu. For twenty years he had labored under the impression that Pu was a woman. Such misconceptions regarding gender offer a prime opportu- nity for voyeurism and for stirring up scandal, as was the case here. Playwright Henry Hwang saw in this story the potential for a deconstructed version of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa.
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