Madama Butterfly
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JACOBS SCHOOL OF MUSIC Seven Hundred Seventy-Third Program of the 2006-07 Season The Indiana University Opera Theater presents, as its 391st production Madama Butterfly An Opera in Three Acts Music by Giacomo Puccini Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa After the story by John Luther Long and the play by David Belasco and John Luther Long David Effron, Conductor Nicholas Muni, Stage Director Max Röthlisberger and C. David Higgins, Set and Costume Designers Michael Schwandt, Lighting Designer Mona Tobin Houston, Diction Coach __________________ Musical Arts Center Friday Evening, April Sixth Saturday Evening, April Seventh Friday Evening, April Thirteenth Saturday Evening, April Fourteenth Eight O’Clock music.indiana.edu Cast (in order of appearance) Goro, a marriage broker . Carmund White, Jason Wickson Lt. B. F. Pinkerton, U.S.N. Marcos Aguiar, Adam Diegel Suzuki, Cio-Cio San’s servant . Abigail Peters, Heng Xia Sharpless, United States Consul at Nagasaki . Kenneth Pereira, Brad Raymond Cio-Cio San, (Madama Butterfly) . Jung Nan Yoon, Jing Zhang The Imperial Commissioner . Adam Cioffari Official Registrar . Justin Moore The Bonze, (a Buddhhist Priest, Cio-Cio San’s uncle) . Jesse Malgieri, Miroslaw Witkowski Prince Yamadori, a rich suitor . Jong-Hun Cha, Joseph Legaspi Sorrow (the child of Butterfly and Pinkerton) . Alexa Minton Kate Pinkerton, Pinkerton’s American wife . Elizabeth Ashantiva, Angela Brower Cio-Cio San’s Relatives: Aunt . Siân Davies Family. Amanda Biggs, Erin Houghton Mother . Christia Starnes Uncle Yakuside . Anthony Webb House Servants . David Johnson, Jonathan Matthews Yamadori’s Servants . Brian Daniels, Nicholas Nesbitt, John Rodger Chorus: Cio-Cio San’s relatives and friends . William Anderson, Amanda Biggs, Jacqueline Brecheen, Brian Daniels, Siân Davies, Rachel Erie, Jessica Feigenbaum, Molly Fetherston, Erin Houghton, Lindsay Kerrigan, Nicholas Nesbitt, Kerriann Otaño, John Rodger, Naomi Ruiz, Emily Smokovich, Julia Snowden, Christia Starnes, Meredith Taylor, Jason Thomas, Anthony Webb Supertitles translation by Nicholas Muni Supertitles are the gift of the Mary Justine McClain Endowment. Synopsis of Scenes The action of Madama Butterfly takes place shortly after the turn of the century, or roughly halfway between the time Commodore Perry began to force Japan out of isolation and the day when Nagasaki became linked with Hiroshima in the world’s consciousness. Act I. Garden of a house in Nagasaki. Intermission Act II. The Interior of the house, three years later. Intermission Act III. The following morning. Synopsis Act I Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton of the U.S. Navy, amused by certain Japanese customs and determined to enjoy the pleasures of the country where he finds himself stationed, has arranged through Goro, a marriage broker, to wed a beautiful young Japanese girl named Cio-Cio-San, who has the nickname Madama Butterfly. Pinkerton intends to marry in Japanese fashion for 999 years, but with a monthly escape clause. The American consul, Sharpless, tries to dissuade Pinkerton, because he senses that the bride believes the marriage will be binding. Pinkerton brushes aside the consul’s concerns and orders Goro to summon the bridal company. Butterfly appears with her relatives and friends, joyous and radiant. Following introductions, the marriage contract is drawn, witnessed, and signed. The crowd is toasting the couple’s happiness when Cio-Cio San’s name is ominously shouted by her uncle, a fanatical Buddhist priest. He storms in, cursing Butterfly for betraying her faith and people to marry the American. Pinkerton confronts him while her relatives renounce the young girl, leaving her in tears. Pinkerton, touched by her weeping and anguish, consoles her, and Act I ends with a moving love duet. Act II Three years have passed since Pinkerton sailed away, leaving Butterfly with the promise that he would return when the robins nested again. Suzuki is skeptical and concerned that their money is almost gone. Butterfly angrily upbraids Suzuki and sings of the day when her husband will return to her. Goro and Sharpless enter and Butterfly greets the Consul joyously, never suspecting that he has come to inform her of Pinkerton’s marriage to an American wife. The Consul fails in his mission, unable to deliver his message in the face of Butterfly’s unwavering trust. Goro attempts to interest her in Yamadori, a rich suitor, but Butterfly declares proudly that she is already married. Sharpless attempts to get her to face the facts by asking what she would do if Pinkerton never returned. After a moment of shock, she replies that she would prefer to die. Suddenly, she brings her child to Sharpless. She informs him that her husband does not know this news but she insists that when he does, he will hasten to return. Sharpless promises her that Pinkerton will be told and leaves. Soon after, a distant canon announces the arrival of Pinkerton’s warship, the Abraham Lincoln. Butterfly, ecstatic with anticipation, hurries to prepare for her beloved’s arrival. With all in readiness, Butterfly, Suzuki, and the child peer out into the deepening darkness, waiting for the arrival of Pinkerton. As night comes, first the child, then Suzuki fall asleep, but Butterfly, rigid and silent, holds her vigil. Act III Dawn. Suzuki and the child are sleeping but Butterfly stands motionless, still watching and waiting. As the morning light floods the room, Suzuki convinces Butterfly to rest and promises to awaken her when Pinkerton arrives. Knocks on the door announce the arrival of Sharpless and, to Suzuki’s astonishment, Pinkerton. But Suzuki’s suspicions are confirmed as she discovers the awful truth of Pinkerton’s American marriage and the reason for his visit to their house: to take his son back to America. As the three discuss the situation, Pinkerton begins to comprehend the full measure of pain and anguish for which he alone is responsible. He cannot remain to face the unsuspecting Butterfly with his dreadful confession and leaves Sharpless to settle the matter. Butterfly appears, expecting to find her husband, but instead confronts Sharpless and Kate Pinkerton. Dazed but calm, Butterfly offers her wishes for happiness to Pinkerton’s new wife and sends word for Pinkerton to come and take his child. Sharpless and Kate retreat, while Butterfly takes her father’s knife bearing the inscription “To die with honor when one can no longer live with honor,” and prepares to commit suicide. She sings a passionate farewell to her uncomprehending child, appropriately named Sorrow, and dies as Pinkerton is heard from the distance calling her name. Notes to the Opera by Kunio Hara The 1904 première of Madama Butterfly at La Scala was a catastrophic failure. According to one eyewitness, the Milanese audience greeted the performance with “grunts, roars, howls, laughter, bellowing, and guffaw.” Shocked by this unexpected show of disapproval, Giacomo Puccini and his librettists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, immediately withdrew the opera from further performance. However, the team soon set out to revise the work, and the opera achieved an enthusiastic reception only three months later. After further revisions, which continued for the next couple of years, Madama Butterfly became one of the most popular operas of the twentieth century. While anecdotes of atrocious opening nights of now popular operas are not uncommon, the troubled beginning of Madama Butterfly is puzzling. Many Puccini biographers have speculated that the fiasco was orchestrated by jealous rivals of the composer. Indeed, there were many reasons to be envious of Puccini, who by 1904 had emerged as the leading composer of opera in Italy after Verdi. At the time of Verdi’s death in 1901, the younger Italian opera composers, including Puccini’s most promising contemporaries Mascagni and Leoncavallo, had achieved few permanent successes outside of Italy. By contrast, all of Puccini’s recent works, including Manon Lescaut (1893), La bohème (1896), and Tosca (1900), had earned considerable international acclaim. As in his earlier works, Puccini’s immediate inspiration for Madama Butterfly was a literary one. In 1900, the composer saw a performance of the American playwright David Belasco’s one- act play Madame Butterfly, based on a short story by a Philadelphia lawyer and amateur author, John Luther Long. Long wrote his work after having a conversation about life in Japan with his sister, who lived in Nagasaki with her missionary husband. He also modeled his short story on the novel Madame Chrysanthème, an autobiographical account by the French naval officer Pierre Loti about his “marriage” to a Japanese girl in Nagasaki. In adopting the short story, Belasco condensed Long’s narrative, eliminating the scenes from Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton’s married life and focusing almost exclusively on the heroine’s longing for her husband’s return. He also altered the conclusion, closing the play with Butterfly’s tragic suicide rather than her enigmatic disappearance as in Long’s short story. Puccini soon realized that Belasco’s play was too short for a full evening’s entertainment and suggested that librettists integrate elements from Long’s short story and Loti’s novel. Accordingly, Illica and Giacosa based many of the details in the first half of the opera on Loti’s impressions of Japanese customs, which, to his European eyes, appeared quaint and exotic. In the second half, they remained faithful to Belasco’s play, preserving elements that the playwright stressed, such as Cio-Cio-San’s vigil and her sensational suicide. These scenes proved to be particularly suited for Puccini, becoming the basis of some of the opera’s most memorable moments: the humming chorus and the subsequent orchestral depiction of the sunrise in Act II and Butterfly’s heartrending farewell to her son at the conclusion. The libretto’s unsympathetic portrayal of Pinkerton is unusual for a romantic hero of an opera. This and Sharpless’s moralizing remarks, betray Long’s, and perhaps his sister’s, ambivalent attitude toward their countrymen’s participation in the sex trade that existed in Japan at that time.