Madama Butterfly

Introduction

“Very beautiful, but not suitable for Italy” – to be honest, it is rather hard to see why Puccini for a time thought this way about David Belasco’s one-act play, even though he quickly secured the rights to turn it into an opera. Unless, perhaps, he had some vague, superstitious premonition connected to the outcome of the future Milan premiere – which would not be surprising in the case of this thoroughly theatrical showman and master of success calculation. For that premiere indeed turned into a fiasco (“a veritable lynching,” shuddered Puccini), and the opera, declared dead by the critics, was immediately removed from La Scala’s program. Yet the composer kept his composure, and like Verdi after the failure of La traviata, he gave both his beloved work – and his unruly audience – a little time. “I know that I have written a living and sincere opera, which will certainly be resurrected,” he wrote in a family letter, and he also took steps to ensure this: for the triumphant Brescia premiere of Madama Butterfly barely three months later, he made several substantive changes to the work. Pinkerton received a splendid aria, the two acts became three, and in the years that followed, Puccini would make four more rounds of smaller or larger revisions to his now world-conquering opera.

A few years ago, at the very site of its original humiliation, La Scala, Riccardo Chailly returned to the two-act original version, brilliantly proving that its earlier failure was in fact a premeditated act of critical deafness. The opera, adorned with one of the great and quintessentially female title roles of the Italian repertoire, is, again quoting the composer, “a continuous duet or monologue, always aiming toward the same goal,” and has long since become an unshakable classic. Yet in our more sensitive modern age, one’s gaze may occasionally pause disapprovingly on certain aspects: the fifteen-year-old bride, the exoticized portrayal of Japan from above, or indeed on virtually every single action of B. F. Pinkerton. These are moments that could prompt reflection and thought both from stage directors and from those older, fuller-bosomed opera lovers whose attention tends to focus mainly on the heroine’s great aria.

Ferenc László

The story of the fiasco of a success

Giacomo Puccini was only happy when he could work, or at least had a subject. In July 1900, when visiting the London premiere of Tosca, he witnessed the American David Belasco’s highly successful play based on John Luther Long’s short story Madame Butterfly. Although Belasco’s boast in his autobiography that Puccini was sobbing when he asked for the script of the play is not true, the piece did have a significant impact on the composer. What captivated him most was the fact that, in spite of not understanding English, he could comprehend everything of the clearcut situation and was enchanted by the little Japanese woman. “In fact, I have not yet found my subject. I despair of it and am tormented in spirit. If at least some reply would come from New York! The more I think of Butterfly the more irresistibly am I attracted....” (November 1900) Puccini cannot wait. He obtains the play and Long’s short story. Musical ideas are gathering in his mind, and he is eager to begin work. He chases, bombards and tortures his two librettists, Giacosa and Illica. “Dear Giacosa, Please, I beg to you on my knees... My stay in the countryside is drawing to its end together with the necessary peacefulness, and I don’t have anything in my hands yet. I’m starting to despair! For God’s sake! Finish the act before the end of the summer!” (June 1901) That summer he buys a car as all technical novelties excite and enthuse him. Driving also helps him to relieve tension resulting from the delayed libretto and his nervousness caused by his wife Elvira’s increasingly frequent outbursts of jealousy. In this period, Elvira could be jealous of only one person: Cio-Cio San. Puccini is completely preoccupied with the little Japanese woman, the piccola signorina Giapponese.

In October 1901, after so many entreaties, Giacosa’s verses arrive. The maestro sets about composing the first act with all his energy. In the meantime, he is pressuring Illica for the remaining scenes, and draws up detailed instructions for the closing sequences. This was how the idea of the humming chorus with its enchanting atmosphere is conceived. He is searching for Japanese folk music. He travels to Milan to take notes on original themes of the twittering voice of the Japanese actress Sada Yakko, who is working as a guest actress there. In Viareggio, he visits the Japanese ambassador’s homely but friendly wife, who is on holiday there and acquaints him with Japanese songs. The ambassador’s wife has original recordings sent from Tokyo. In the meantime, he finds Rosina Storchio, who can sing the role of the little Japanese woman, and he listens to her in Milan. Nothing is tender, sincere and intimate enough to express this female figure who is the embodiment of desire, the Isolda of the Far East. It is the two librettists who suffer the consequences of this love as suggestions for modifications come thick and fast. Some of the composer’s requests almost lead to a split from the sensitive Giacosa. Puccini decides to delete a whole act, which would have taken place at the American Consulate.

On 25 February 1903, Puccini, Elvira and their chauffeur drive to Lucca for dinner. On the way back, the car skids on the winding road over the mountain pass, drifts off the road and hits a tree. Puccini is thrown from the vehicle and eventually found under the car with an open fracture in his leg. His recovery takes extremely long. Puccini lives through painful months and ceases composition. He resumes work only at the end of the month. According to a family story, on one evening he crawls to the piano, partly on his knees, partly lying on the floor, with his leg in plaster and happily plays the characteristic opal-tinted harmonies of the opera. He has never been more certain about the fate of his opera than now. He is especially convinced about the authenticity of his piece by the understanding and love which the staff, from the stage hands to the prop man, demonstrated as they watched the rehearsals with tears in their eyes.

On 17 February 1904, in the crowded auditorium of La Scala in Milan, it was not Madama Butterfly that failed but a theatrical scandal broke out that was rare even for Italy. Puccini described his feelings later as follows: “All the joy I have ever received from the theatre is dwarfed by the pain I felt at La Scala that night. I couldn’t have suffered more if I had had to see a mob of cannibals tear my child to pieces. I created my Butterfly with intimate love, with more love than any of my other pieces... When I couldn’t stand on my feet for eight months I still continued work in pain... My beloved child wanted to be born at all costs... I would never have expected that I could be executed like that on that evening. My arias were accompanied with groans, mewing, wild shouts and giggles. I escaped to the dressing room from behind the scenes, but I could hear the derisive noises of the audience there too... While Rosina Storchio was singing the most passionate melodies of the second act with desperate courage amidst the scornful din, I admit, the pains and the humiliation made me cry.”

The scandal makes Puccini, who otherwise fell into depression easily, defiant. He makes some changes to the original structure of the opera: he cuts large parts of the first act, leaves out many of Illica’s humorous Japanese episodes from the wedding scene, and makes the love duet more compact. Puccini writes ironically “the most beautiful parts of the opera” on the pages of the score which have been cut and glued together. He divides the second act into two parts, and closes the new Act Two with the humming chorus. The new Act Three – instead of some redundant parts – is amended with Pinkerton’s beautiful farewell aria, which Giacosa had sorely missed. “I know that I have written a living and honest opera, which will be resurrected. The press, the public can say what they want, they can throw stones at me like at Stephen the martyr, but they cannot bury me; and they cannot kill my Butterfly, who will rise again, healthier and more alive than before.” (February 1904) Three months after that scandalous evening, the audience at the Teatro Grande in Brescia – to the great surprise of the opposition camp in Milan – surrendered entirely to the beauty of the opera.

Gergely Paál
(Based on the book Puccini by Tibor Fajth and Tamás Nádor)