In June 1900, Giacomo Puccini Went to London to Attend the British Premiere of Tosca

“CLOSED, EFFICIENT, TERRIBLE!”: REFLECTIONS ON THE GENESIS AND DRAMATURGY OF ILLICA’S, GIACOSA’S AND PUCCINI’S MADAMA BUTTERFLY

KASPER VAN KOOTEN

In June 1900, Giacomo Puccini went to London to attend the British premiere of Tosca. On the lookout for a new operatic subject, he saw a performance of David Belasco’s Madame Butterfly at the Duke of York’s Theatre, and regardless of his negligible knowledge of the English language, was profoundly moved.1 If we may believe Belasco, Puccini rushed into his dressing room after the performance to secure the rights of the play. Many years later the playwright stated: “I agreed at once and told him that he could … make any sort of contract, because it is impossible to discuss business arrangements with an impulsive Italian who has tears in his eyes and both arms around your neck.”2 This anecdote, marking the genesis of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, is peculiar, since the account of the meeting in the dressing room is poetically exaggerated, if not completely made up. Furthermore, Puccini did not acquire the rights so easily, in a one-on-one gentleman’s agreement between two fellow artists. In fact, it took until March 1901 before Puccini’s publisher Ricordi obtained the rights, and an Italian translation of the play was not available to Puccini and his librettists until June of the same year. Therefore, Luigi Illica started to draft the libretto not from Belasco’s text, but from an Italian translation of John Luther Long’s short story “Madame Butterfly” (1898), the play’s initial model. Puccini, who was not aware that Belasco’s play departed in many respects from Long’s original, was unpleasantly surprised when he read Illica’s first libretto sketch.

1 He recorded that its impact was “like pouring gasoline on a fire” (Carlo Paladini, Giacomo Puccini, Florence, 1961, 101). All English translations in this article have been made by the author, unless otherwise stated. 2 William Jefferson Winter, The Life of David Belasco, New York, 1918, I, 489. 270 Kasper van Kooten

Puccini clearly preferred Belasco’s piece, especially its tragic ending.3 Furthermore, the composer was disturbed by Illica’s first Long-based text because it deviated enormously from the play both in its dramaturgy as in its aesthetic orientation. Since Illica was unfamiliar with the characteristics and merits of Belasco’s rendering, it proved difficult for Puccini to convince his colleague that this particular piece, and not Long’s version, should form the basis of the Butterfly project they were about to embark on. The divergent views of Puccini and Illica on the future opera formed a problematic point of departure for the working process, but the polyphony of artistic voices gained in complexity when Illica’s fellow librettist Giuseppe Giacosa, bringing in his own particular dramatic outlooks and preferences, entered the negotiation table. Illica and Giacosa collaborated not only on the text of Madama Butterfly, but had also provided the librettos of Puccini’s two former, enormously successful works, La Bohème (1896) and Tosca (1900). Generally speaking, Illica had a powerful dramatic instinct, whereas Giacosa wrote great verses, and therefore usually joined in the collaboration at a later stage.4 Besides the composer and his two librettists, the experienced and outspoken publisher Giulio Ricordi also took part in the collective quest for a most suitable form, which continued even beyond the opera’s disastrous premiere at the Milan Teatro alla Scala in 1904. A first printed score would only materialize in 1907, and contained a considerable number of alterations requested by the French stage director Albert Carré for his 1906 Paris Opéra Comique production, adding yet another artistic personality to the discussion. This complicated genesis of one of the most popular and frequently performed works of opera history provides an interesting insight into the literary and theatrical requirements of an Italian opera libretto around 1900. The discussions concerning its ultimate form revolve around several fields of tension: between Italian and international currents; between dramaturgies that had proven successful in the past century and novel, experimental ones; between adapting a dramatic or

3 Letter to Illica, 6 March 1901, in Carteggi Pucciniani, ed. Emilio Gara, Milan, 1958, 207. 4 Both Puccini as well as Ricordi were very pleased with the way the two complemented each other, and after Giacosa’s death in 1906, Puccini continued to work with pairs of librettists in most of his opera projects.