Picturing Cio-Cio-San: House, Screen, and Ceremony in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly"

Author(s): Helen M. Greenwald

Source: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Nov., 2000), pp. 237-259
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3250716
Accessed: 14-03-2019 14:25 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3250716?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Cambridge Opera Journal

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Cambridge Opera Journal, 12, 3, 237-259 ? 2001 Cambridge University Press

Picturing Cio-Cio-San: House, screen, and

ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfl
HELEN M. GREENWALD

Abstract: I propose that certain 'Japanese' elements of Puccini's Madama But

analogues that support a reading of the opera as more profoundly authen
been argued. My discussion begins with the house, the most basic scenic
opera, and develops via a number of interrelated issues: the Japanese ho
the life cycle, Puccini's choice of the home as his single set, and finally, Butt
central event in an unfolding home-based life-cycle that raises issues of
corresponding to values of the geisha culture.

Discussions about authenticity in Madama Butterfly usually focus

Puccini based in significant part upon a series of borrowed mel
this musical genesis are well known. Puccini consulted wit
Viareggio, Hisako Oyama, the wife of the Japanese ambassador
him 'a great many things,'3 and he sought out Japanese music
and amassed a number of specimens from sketches, publis
commercial recordings.4 He attended performances of the
Theatrical Company, and visited with the Japanese actress Sada
Milanese tour.5 The product of his efforts was a beautifully coh

This is an expanded version of 'Beyond Exoticism: Cio-Cio-San's Screen

Convention,' read at the 16th Congress of the International Musicological
1997. A related essay will appear as 'Issues of Authenticity in Two Films
Madama Butterfl: Ponnelle (1974) and Mitterrand (1995),' in Das Musiktheat
audiovisuellen Medien: 'ersichtlich gewordene Taten der Musik,' ed. Peter Csobadi,
Jiirgen Kiihnel and Oswald Panagl (Salzburg, 2001). I wish to thank Joh
Hahn, Ralph P. Locke, Peter Row and Derek B. Scott for reading and co
earlier drafts of this essay.
2 This aspect of the opera has been discussed by a number of authors. See,
Mosco Carner, Puccini: A Critical Biography (New York, 1974; repr., 1988),
Miyazawa, 'Some Original Japanese Melodies in Madama Butterfly,' in Giacom
centenario della nascita (Lucca, 1958), 157-61; Julian Smith, 'Musical Exotic
Butterfl,' in Esotismo e colore locale nell'opera di Puccini, ed. Jurgen Maehder
Kimiyo Powils-Okano, Puccinis 'Madama Butterfl' (Bonn, 1986), 44-62; Mic
Giacomo Puccini: His InternationalArt, trans. Laura Basini (Chicago, 2000),
Greenwald, 'Character Distinction and Rhythmic Differentiation in Pucci
Giacomo Puccini: L'uomo, il musicista, ilpanorama europeo, ed. Gabriella Biagi R
Carolyn Gianturco (Lucca, 1997), 501-4; Arthur Groos, 'Cio-Cio-San and
Japanese Music-theater in Madama Butterfy,' Monumenta Nipponica, 54/1 (
3 See Puccini's letters of 1902 (letters 74 and 75) in Giacomo Puccini, Episto
Giuseppe Adami; introduzione di Enzo Siciliano (Milan, 1982), hereafter
4 Arthur Groos discusses these materials at some length in 'Sadayakko' (see
45-47 and 45, n. 26. See also Michael Kaye, The Unknown Puccini: A Historical
Songs, Including Little-known Music from 'Edgar' and 'La Rondine' with Complete
Piano (New York and Oxford, 1987), 94-6; and Robert F. Waters, 'Emula
Influence: Japonisme and Western Music in Fin-de-Siecle Paris,' The Music Re
214-26, especially 221ff.
5 See Groos, 'Sadayakko' (n. 2).

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
238 Helen M. Greenwald

at least in part by borrowed melodies and idiomatic gestures, an intellectual and

artistic step beyond the faceless efforts of his predecessors: Saint-Saens's La Princesse
jaune (1872), Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885), Messager's Madame
Chrysantheme (1893), Sidney Jones's The Geisha (1896), and Mascagni's Iris
(1898).
Less has been written, however, about issues of authenticity as they pertain to the
stage setting in Madama Butterfl beyond, again, the most generic notice of obis,
kimonos, parasols, and, of course, cherry blossoms.6 The most comprehensive
study of what is 'Japanese' in Madama Butterfl is by Arthur Groos, who has written
at some length on the pseudo-Japanese elements in the opera and the history of its
reception by Japanese from the time of the opera's composition to the present day,
making important notice of the fin-de-siecle phenomenon, japonisme, 'the appropri-
ation and incorporation of Japanese subject matter in European art-forms at the end
of the nineteenth century, a process that in verbal genres often encodes the exotic
material with a variety of subtexts.'7 Butjaponisme was also a variety of 'Orientalism,'
and as Derek B. Scott has observed, 'Musical Orientalism has never been overly
concerned with establishing distinction between Eastern cultures, and an inter-
changeability of exotic signifiers proved to be commonplace.'8 Thus there was a
tendency to rely on a 'generic oriental ambience' communicated musically through
gongs, ersatz koto music, and some authentic Japanese instruments that composers
were able to acquire along with other paraphernalia during turn-of-century
European exhibitions,9 while the mise-en-scene quilted together elements that could be
extrapolated and imitated from Japanese art, including 'bridges, fans, floral sprays,

6 Exceptions include Susann Strasser-Vill, 'Exoticism in Stage Art at the Beginning of the 20th
Century,' in Maehder, ed., Esotismo e colore locale (n. 2), 53-64, and most recently, Mercedes
Viale Ferrero, 'Reflessioni sulle scenografie pucciniane,' Studi Pucciniani, 1 (1998), 19-42.
7 Arthur Groos, 'Return of the Native: Japan in Madama Butterfly/Madama Butterfly in Japan,'
this journal, 1 (1989), 168. See also Klaus Berger, Japonisme in Western Painting from Whistler to
Matisse, trans. David Britt (Cambridge, 1992).
8 Derek B. Scott, 'Orientalism and Musical Style,' The MusicalQuarterly, 82/2 (1998), 12. See
also Ralph P. Locke, 'Exoticism and Orientalism in Music: Problems for the Worldly Critic,'
in Speak Truth to Power The Work of Edward W. Said, ed. Paul Anthony Bove (Durham, North
Carolina, forthcoming).
9 See Arthur Groos, 'Return of the Native' (n. 7), 168, and 'Sadayakko' (n. 2);
Christoph-Hellmut Mahling, 'The "Japanese Image" in Opera, Operetta, and Instrumental
Music at the End of the 19th and During the 20th Century,' in Tradition and its Future in
Music, Report of SIMS 1990 Osaka, ed. Yoshiko Tokumaru et al. (Tokyo and Osaka, 1991),
369-78; Waters, 'Emulation and Influence' (n. 4), 214-26; Heinz Becker, 'Die "Couleur
locale" als Stilkategorie der Oper," in Die 'Couleur locale' in der Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed.
Heinz Becker (Regensburg, 1976), 23-46; and Maehder, ed., Esotismo e colore locale (n. 2). See
also Ralph P. Locke, 'Constructing the Oriental 'Other': Saint-Saens's Samson et Dalila,' this
journal, 3/3 (1991), 261-302; his 'Cutthroats and Casbah Dancers, Muezzins and Timeless
Sands: Musical Images of the Middle East,' 19th-Centuy Music, 22/1 (1998), 20-53; and his
'Reflections on Orientalism in Opera and Musical Theater,' Opera Quarterly, 10/1 (Autumn
1993), 48-64; Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London, 1978; repr.
Harmondsworth, 1985); Manfred Kelkel, Naturalisme, verisme, et realisme dans l'opera (Paris,
1984); and Gilles de Van, "L'exotisme fin de siecle et le sens du lointain," in Atti del 2?
Convegno internationale "Ruggero Leoncavallo nel suo tempo", ed. Lorenza Guiot and Jurgen
Maehder (Milan, 1995), 103-18.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfly 239

cranes, bamboo, butterflies, parasols, and herons.'? On the surface Madama Butterf
would seem scenically to reflect precisely these values.
Madama Butterfl, however, was completely in keeping with Puccini's life-long
obsession with authentic local color and its potential for spectacle. That Luigi Illica's
libretto was based upon a real incident dramatized in a play by David Belasco, which
was in turn derived from a short story by John Luther Long whose sister Jennie
Long Correll had actually witnessed the affair, undoubtedly lent credence to the
entire project and fueled Puccini's ongoing desire to re-create 'real' ambiences.11 In
this essay I propose that Puccini went beyond generic 'Orientalism' orjaponisme in
both the visual dimension of this work, and in the portrayal of Butterfly herself, and
that to find more profound visual 'truth' of situation and character in Madama
Butterfly, we need to look at the home, not only the backdrop for this opera, but for
essentially every retelling of the archetypal tragic narrative of the doomed love of a
geisha for an unworthy Westerner.
Excerpts from versions of this story by Loti, Long, Belasco, and Giacosa and
Illica, in particular, glow with their curiosity and awe over the strangeness of the
Japanese dwelling. Loti, one of the earliest chroniclers, sees the house as a
completely foreign object, a surreal dream:

The house is just as I had fancied it should be in the many dreams of Japan I had made
before my arrival, during my long night watches: perched on high, in a peaceful suburb, in
the midst of green gardens; - made of paper panels, and taken to pieces according to one's
fancy, like a child's toy.12

John Luther Long also saw the paper walls as precarious, in need of reinforcement
and protection by Western locks:

Some clever Japanese artisans then made the paper walls of the pretty house eye-proof, and,
with their own adaptations of American hardware, the openings cunningly lockable. The
rest was Japanese.13

The idea of juxtaposing American locks with paper walls was then taken up by
David Belasco in his play, where he described the scenario as follows:

The Play takes place in Japan in Madame Butterfly's little house at the foot of Higashi Hill,
facing the harbor. Everything in the room is Japanese save the American locks and bolts on
the doors and windows and an American flag fastened to a tobacco jar.14

10 See Joseph Kestner, 'Bridge of Dreams: How Western Perceptions of a Distant Land Led
to the Flowering of japonisme,' Opera News (7 January 1995), 10.
1 Arthur Groos discusses the 'real' events in 'Madame Butterfly: the Story,' this journal, 3
(1991), 125-58.
12 Pierre Loti, Japan: Madame Chrysanthemum, trans. Laura Ensor (London, 1985), 71-2,
hereafter Loti/Ensor, and the original, Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysantheme (Paris, 1893), 57,
hereafter Loti/original.
13 John Luther Long, 'Madame Butterfly,' Century MagaZine, 55 January 1898), reprinted in
Giacomo Puccini: 'Madama Buttery,' English National Opera Guide 26, ed. Nicholas John
(London and New York, 1984), 26; hereafter ENO 26.
14 David Belasco, Madame Butterfy, in Representative American Plays from 1767 to the Present Day,
6th ed., ed. Arthur Hobson Quinn (New York, 1938), 627.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
240 Helen M. Greenwald

In Giacosa and Illica's libretto, Pinkerton guffaws condescendingly at the foreign

dwelling:

Goro: The wall slides outward ...

Pinkerton: I understand! Another one ...
Goro: Glides!
Pinkerton: And the frivolous abode ...
Goro (protesting): ... is solid as a rock, from the ground up to the roof.
Pinkerton: It is but a breath of a house.15

It is David Henry Hwang, however, one of the most recent literary commentators
on this tale, and the only Asian, who goes to the heart of the matter to note
succinctly and acidly, through the Westerner, Gallimard, that in Madama Butterfi
wife and home are inseparable:

Gallimard: As the curtain rises, he's just closed on two great bargains: one on a house, the
other on a woman - call it a package deal.16

Hwang has expressed a subtle idea with powerful implications I wish to explore.
Not only are Cio-Cio-San's (Madame Butterfly's) house and the ceremonies that
take place within it essential to Puccini's music drama, but the home and its ritual
cycles may be the most powerful context for thinking about authenticity in what
might otherwise be viewed as a superficial Italian dramatization of the profound
conflict of Eastern and Western values that the story unfolds. I wish to show that
while Puccini's intention regarding authentic Japanese matters can be 'proven'
evidentially in only a limited way, a number of decisions he made about character
focus and visual scenario in Madama Butterfl were uncharacteristic in light of his past
practice and thus suggest the following conclusions: that he may have known more
than can actually be proven; or, even if he didn't 'know' more, his use of traditional
or even stereotyped icons of the East transcends 'Orientalism' and prevents their
being read simply as conventions of 'Orientalist' opera. I then comment on the
ideologies of performance and production to show that certain 'Japanese' elements
of Madama Butterfly have real cultural analogues that support a reading of the opera
as more profoundly 'authentic' than has usually been argued. My discussion begins
with the house, the most basic scenic component of the opera, and develops via a
number of interrelated issues: the Japanese home as the center of the life cycle
(particularly for women), Puccini's choice of the home as his single set, and, finally,
Butterfly's 'Vigil' scene, as the central event in an unfolding home-based life-cycle,
each component of which depends upon the same household object, the screen.
Finally, I wish to show that the cycle in the opera raises issues of ritual and

15 Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, libretto, Madama Butterfy, ENO 26, 69. [Goro: Un fianco
scorre ... / Pinkerton: Capisco! Un altro ... / Goro: Scivola! / Pinkerton: E la dimora
frivola ... / Goro: Salda come una torre da terra, infino al tetto ... / Pinkerton: E un casa
a soffietto.] All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
16 David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfy (New York, 1988), 10.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfly 241

ceremony corresponding to values of the geisha culture, actions and objects whose
significance is engraved in the primary historical and visual record of the Yoshiwara,
the woodblock print.17

The Japanese home in Western literature, theatre, and letters at the

fin-de-siecle
Europeans unabashedly borrowed images from Eastern art, as satirized in the
opening lines of Gilbert's 1885 libretto for The Mikado:
Chorus of Nobles: If you want to know who we are,
We are gentlemen of Japan:
On many a vase and jar -
On many a screen and fan,
We figure in lively paint:
Our attitude's queer and quaint -
You're wrong if you think it ain't, oh!18

Beyond satire, however, Gilbert was also concerned with venue, and, after much
consideration, he discarded alternative settings for his opening scene, including a
market place, a wharf, and a Nagasaki street, and settled upon the courtyard and
garden of a Japanese palace, a home.19 Such fascination with the dwelling was a
subtle norm in other contemporary works. For example, in the prologue to
Messager's Madame Chrysantheme, after Pierre Loti's novel, Pierre envisions his life
with a 'little woman with black hair [une petite femme a cheveux noirs]' in a 'little
house of paper [une maisonette en papier . ..]' with a garden.20 Saint-Saens's La
Princessejaune also takes place in a home, which, while not a Japanese one, is still
furnished in the fashion of the fin-de-siecle with Japanese artifacts.21 Thus, the house
became a common denominator of the stage set, even if its significance was not
entirely understood.22

17 The watershed year for European interaction with Japan on the artistic front was 1862,
when the first woodblock prints began to appear. The major event of this time, however,
was the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867. See Berger, Japonisme in Western Painting (n.
7), 10-19.
18 See Sir William Schwenk Gilbert, The Mikado or The Town of Titipu, in The Complete Annotated
Gilbert and Sullivan, intro. and ed. Ian Bradley (Oxford, 1996), 559. See also Michael
Beckerman, 'The Sword on the Wall: Japanese Elements and their Significance in The
Mikado,' The Musical Quarterly, 73 (1989), 303-19; Paul Seeley, 'The Japanese March in The
Mikado,' The Musical Times, 126 (August 1985), 454-6; and Toshio Yokoyama, Japan in the
Victorian Mind: A Study of Stereotyped Images of a Nation 1850-80 (Houndmills, 1987).
19 As noted by Bradley, The Mikado, 559, Gilbert's decision was reported in the New York
Herald Tribune in 1885.
20 Andr6 Messager, Madame Ch7ysantheme (New York, 1911), 5-6.
21 See Camille Saint-Saens and Louis Gallet, La Princessejaune: Opera-comique en un acte,
piano-vocal score (Paris, 1906).
22 An exception would seem to be the opening setting of Mascagni's Iris, a 'tiny simple
cottage with its colored blinds and wooden doors' [... l'umile casetta tua cosi modesta e
semplice colle sue stouie colorate e i battenti di quercia .. .] which seems quintessentially
European, despite Illica's efforts to convey realism by combining images of masked geishas
with the trappings of Japanese puppet theatre in his libretto. See Luigi Illica, libretto, Iris,
trans. W. G. Day (New York, 1902), 20-1.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
242 Helen M. Greenwald

Japonisme, as it was practiced in France through its importation of Japanese work

of art, furniture, and textiles as well as through its influence on French print making,
painting and decorative arts, tended to ignore the house as a whole, and concentrat
on individual objects within it. Indeed, as Martin Eidelberg and William R. Johnsto
have noted:

The starkness of the Japanese dwelling and its flexible, flowing spaces were quite alien to the
French designer, who sought instead to create, through the display of a melange of bibelots,
a setting evocative of a romantic, exotic East. Characteristic components of the Japoniste
room were fans applied to the wall in asymmetrical patterns, parasols, screens, a profusion
of Oriental porcelain, imported bamboo furniture, hanging paper lanterns, and the
ubiquitous palm tree. Often there was a frieze of Noh masks, a device known to have been
employed by the painter Gerome before 1883.23

In his novel, based upon his experiences as a naval officer in Japan, Pierre Loti
noticed this stark contrast in living environments:

What always strikes one on first entering a Japanese dwelling is the extreme cleanliness, the
white and chilling bareness of the rooms.
Over the most irreproachable mattings, without a crease, a line, or a stain, I am led
upstairs to the first storey and ushered into a big empty room, absolutely empty! The paper
walls are mounted on sliding panels, which fitting into each other, can be made to disappear
entirely ...24

Later on in the story, Loti remarks again on the spareness of the house, 'In our
home, all has the appearance of a Japanese picture: we have nothing but little
folding-screens.'25 Yet despite such sensitivity and awareness, Loti himself 'main-
tained a pagode japonas in his home which, with its rows of wooden pillars and
brackets, hanging paper lanterns, and Buddhist statues set in niches, suffered from
the same fault of clutter' that marred other contemporary European presentations
ofjaponaisere.26 The extreme austerity, 'silence,' and stillness of the Japanese room
marked its major departure from European overstatement, and it was a difference
that was noted with a keen eye by artist John La Farge, who wrote from Nikko on
2 August 1886:
Within, the Japanese house is simplicity itself; all is framework, and many screens instead of
a wall. No accumulations, no bric-a-brac; any lady's drawing-room with us will contain more

23 Martin Eidelberg and William R. Johnston, 'Japonisme and French Decorative Arts,' in
Japonisme: Japanese Influence on French Art 1854-1910, ed. Gabriel Weisberg, Phillip Dennis
Cate and Gerald Needham et al. (London, 1975), 149.
24 Loti/Ensor, 35-6, and Loti/original (see n. 12), 23. See also the accounts of other
European travelers to Japan of the period, including: Lafcadio Hearn, 'Out of the East'.
Reveries and Studies in New Japan (Boston and New York, 1895); idem, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes
of Japanese Inner Life (Boston, 1896); idem, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (New York,
1904); John La Farge, An Artist's Letters from Japan (New York, 1897); and Paul Claudel,
Connaissance de l'Est (Paris, 1946).
25 Loti/Ensor, 71, and Loti/original (see n. 12), 57.
26 See Eidelberg and Johnston, 'Japonisme and French Decorative Arts' (n. 23), 149, who also
note, 'this was but one room in a remarkably eclectic residence whose other rooms
included a Turkish mosque and salon; Arabian, Chinese, and Gothic chambers and a Louis
XI dining room.'

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfly 243

odds and ends than all that I have yet seen together in Japan ... It is possible that when I
return I shall feel still more distaste for the barbarous accumulation in our houses, and recall
the far more civilized emptiness persisted in by the more esthetic race.27
In this context, it is not surprising that Carlo Songa's sketch for the second act set
of the 1904 premiere of Madama Buttef/y reveals the interior of Cio-Cio-San's house
to be a curious mix of turn-of-century opulence and authentically spare Japanese
design, not quite a true Japanese ambience, but one filtered through the Italian eye,
adapted and reshaped (Fig. 1).28 It would not be long, however, before Albert
Carre, in his production, premiered 28 December 1906 at the Opera-Comique in
Paris, purged the Italianate excesses from the staging. Carre paid the utmost
attention to scenic issues, even to the extent of including in his mise-en-scene detailed
descriptions of the set and properties, including such architectural elements of the
Japanese house as the shoji and the fusama, designated with proper terminology.29
Puccini was very pleased by Carre's special attention to Japanese detail, and wrote
to Alfredo Vandini 13 July 1906:
The director of the opera, Carr6, will do a special, very original staging ... It is the first
opera to be given in Japanese costume at the Opera-Comique.30
Thus the set ultimately presented an environment quite different from any in which
the audience might have lived. In true 'Orientalist' fashion, they remained outsiders
to the opera's milieu at the same time that the opera itself attempted to convey more
truthfully the feel of Japanese life.

The home as the single set in Madama Butterfly

As noted above, Puccini was preoccupied- perhaps even obsessed- with both
spectacle and authenticity throughout his career. It would be difficult, for example,
to imagine Tosca without the 'Te Deum' scene in the Chiesa di Sant'Andrea della
Valle or the austerity of the dungeon of the Castel Sant'Angelo. La boheme is defined
by the contrast between Rodolfo's bleak and spare garret and the brilliance, gaiety,
and color of the Latin Quarter. Beginning with Manon Lescaut Puccini took great
pains to vary the visual affect of his works through colorful and effective scene
changes, demanding new sets and providing a balance between densely populated

27 See La Farge, An Artist's Letters (n. 24), 126-7.

28 See also Giorgio Lise, 'Appunti di scenografia per Madama Butterfy,' Teatro alla scala, stagione
1985-86, 'Madama Butterfy' (program book), 80-1.
29 See Bibliotheque de 1'Association de la regie thbatrale (1'A.R.T.) / Bibliotheque Historique
de la Ville de Paris, M 36 IV, Theatre National de l'Opera Comique / Madame Butterfl / Tragedie
japonaise / en trois actes, / de M. L. Illica et Giacosa / Traduction de M. Paul Ferrier / Musique de
M. Giacomo Puccini / Mise en Scene / de M. Albert Carre / et redigee par M.r Carbonne. See also
H. Robert Cohen and Marie-Odile Gigou, Cents Ans de Mise en Scene Ljrique en France (env.
1830-1930): Catalogue descriptf des livrets de mise en scene, des libretti annotes et des partitions annotees
dans la Bibliotheque de l'Association de la regie the'atrale (Paris), pref. Philip Gossett (New York,
1986), 145-6. See also Viale Ferrero, 'Riflessioni' (n. 6), 34-42, and Girardi, Puccini (n. 2),
247-58. Puccini made a number of significant musical changes for this production. For a
discussion of these, see Linda Fairtile, 'Giacomo Puccini's Revisions as Manifestations of
His Compositional Priorities,' Ph.D. diss., New York University (1996), especially Chapter
III.

30 See Eugenio Gara, ed., Carteggipucciniani [hereafter CP] (Milan, 1958), letter no. 479.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
244 Helen M. Greenwald

Fig. 1: Carlo Songa, sketch for Act II of Madama Buttetjy (1904). Reproduced by permissi
of the Archivio Storico Ricordi. All rights reserved.

crowd scenes and intimate moments between lovers. He grappled fiercely wi

scenic designs - even in a one-act work like Suor Angelica in which he struggled
vain to change the scene by suggesting the construction of aparlatorio to house mo
intimately and privately the intense dramatic exchange between Angelica and La Z
Principessa.31 However, Puccini explored much more profound territory, took a
greater risk than he had ever taken before, when, in a striking and unique move,
set a full-length work - Madama Butterfl - in a single setting.
Puccini was likely to use only a single set for his one-act operas, and it i
significant in this respect that his mode of working on and thinking about Madam
Butterfi reflects in many ways the concentrated action, highly distilled method, an
dramaturgy of his later single-act operas in which an extended and 'colorfu
prologue is followed by more intimate action. Madama Butterfj, which loosely m
be described as a musical re-composition of Belasco's one-act play with a colorful
prologue attached to it - all played on a single set- follows this pattern, as th
on-stage population gradually diminishes until the only person ]eft is Cio-Cio-San
This structure seems to be the model for Suor Angelica, in which a string o
expository episodes-prayers, penance, shopping nuns (all of which actually
annoyed some critics)32 - precedes the powerful and very private confrontation
Angelica and the Principessa. There is a similar pattern in II Tabarro where t
densely populated first half of the act yields to the more intimate exchanges betwe
Giorgetta and Luigi. This plan is also common to single acts within a full-length
Puccini opera, for example, the first act of La boheme, which opens with an ensemb

31 The parlatorio was never built. See Puccini's letter of 11 October 1918 to Tito Ricordi, CP
734.
32 See, for example, James Huneker in the New York Times, 15 December 1918.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfly 245

scene of the Bohemians and closes with the duet between Mimi and Rodolfo. The
issue is complicated in Madama Butterfly, however, by its metamorphosis from a
one-act play to a two-act opera at birth to a three-act structure at maturity.33 But
Puccini had envisioned Madama Butterfly as an extended work from the very
beginning, as his letter of 20 November 1900 to Giulio Ricordi attests:
The more I think of Butterfi the more irresistibly am I attracted. Oh, if only I had it here
that I might set to work on it! I think that instead of one act I could make two quite long
ones: the first in North America and the second in Japan. Illica could certainly find in the
novel everything that is wanted.34

The North American venue, however, was never to become a reality at all, as
Puccini continued to struggle. He eventually suggested another site, the American
Consulate in Japan, a scene, which, as sketched by Illica, took place in the second
part of the opera and in which Butterfly would first encounter Pinkerton's wife,
Kate. Indeed, Illica envisioned the opera in two parts, with the second divided into
three sections for variety, as he writes to Giulio Ricordi 3 November 1901:
And I ought to tell you about something that seems especially good in the second part, i.e.,
that the Consul lives in a European-styled villa in the so-called 'European concession.' Thus
the three sections of the second part acquire a great variety:
1. Butterfly's house; 2. the Consul's villa; 3. Butterfly's house.35

Yet by 16 November 1902 Puccini was, without a doubt, dead set against not only
the Consulate Act, but any alteration that would detract from the two-part format
he had originally envisioned. He wrote to Illica:

Do you know what I've discovered? The Consulate was heading me towards disaster! The
opera ought to be in two acts only: your first act and the other just Belasco's drama with all
of its particulars (emphasis mine).36

33 For discussions of Puccini's many revisions of Madama Butterfly, see, for example, Carner, A
Critical Biography (n. 2); Cecil Hopkinson, Bibliography of the Works of Giacomo Puccini
1858-1924 (New York, 1968); Julian Smith, 'Madame Butterfly: the Paris Premiere of 1906,'
in Werk und Widergabe: Musiktheater exemplarisch interpretiert, ed. Sigrid Wiesmann (Bayreuth,
1980), 229-38; idem, 'Tribulations of a score,' in ENO 26 (n. 13), 15-24; William
Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini (Oxford, 1968; repr., Ithaca and London, 1985); Allan W.
Atlas, 'Crossed Stars and Crossed Tonal Areas in Puccini's Madama Butterfly,' 19th-Century
Music, 14 (1990), 186-96; Arthur Groos, 'Lieutenant F. B. Pinkerton: Problems in the
Genesis and Performance of Madama Buttefly,' in The Puccini Companion, ed. William Weaver
and Simonetta Puccini (New York, 1994), 169-201; Fairtile, 'Giacomo Puccini's Operatic
Revisions' (n. 29); Girardi, Puccini (n. 2), especially 235-45; William Ashbrook, 'Reflections
on the Revisions of Madama Butterfl,' in Biagi and Gianturco, ed., Giacomo Puccini (n. 2),
159-68; and most recently, Dieter Schickling, 'Puccini's "Work in Progress": the So-Called
Versions of Madama Butterfl,' Music and Letters, 79 (1998), 527-35, and the comprehensive
recording, Madama Butterfy (Vox Classics 4 7525), which presents the original 1904 version
alongside the revisions for Paris and Brescia, with detailed notes by Michael Kaye.
4 Adami, letter 69, translated by Ena Makin in Letters of Giacomo Puccini, ed. Giuseppe Adami,
new edition, revised and introduced by Mosco Carner (London, 1974).
35 CP (see n. 30), 249 (originally dated March 1901), translated in Arthur Groos, 'The Lady
Vanishes: the Lost Act of Madama Butterfly,' Opera News (7 January 1995), 17. See also
Groos's 'Madama Butterfly: il perduto atto del consolato americano,' in Biagi and Gianturco,
ed., Giacomo Puccini (n. 2), 147-57; and his 'Lieutenant F.B. Pinkerton' (n. 33).
36 CP (see n. 30), 287.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
246 Helen M. Greenwald

With this decision Puccini effectively eliminated any scenic juxtaposition of East and
West, and consequently the caricatures such stark visual comparisons are inclined to
reveal. Puccini, however, was still concerned with Japanese ambience, but opted
instead to tie visual elements to dramatic and emotional issues.
Puccini's decision to have a single set, with its corollary effect that we never see
Cio-Cio-San away from home, reflects a Japanese understanding of the relationship
between the domicile and its inhabitants. For example, Heinrich Engel has shown
that it remains customary (even in present-day Japanese) to refer to people in
'building terminology.'37 Thus Cio-Cio-San, as the lady of the house, is oku-sama,
which, according to Engel, 'means (in the literal sense of its Chinese characters) the
dark or inner chamber (of the house).'38 A woman might even be referred to by her
husband as kanai, 'the house interior' or tsuma, 'the gable.'39 Indeed, as Engel,
explains in much detail, 'the individual was of no worth in [the] family except as a
representative of the "house" . . . valued because of his contributions to the
"house" rather than for his inherent attributes.'40 In these terms Madama Butterfl
may be defined as a one-act opera with prologue that introduces not only the main
character, but her home, a psychological and cultural 'package deal,' as Hwang's
Gallimard puts it (see above). Most important, as Chris Fawcett has observed, 'The
house and its kami (deities) are very much bound up with the individual's life
history: from birth to death, the domicile is the stage upon which the major events
[of life history] take place.'41

37 Heinrich Engel, The Japanese House: A Tradition for Contemporasy Architecture (Rutland, VT, and
Tokyo, 1964), 223.
38 Ibid.
39 Ihid.
40 Ibid. Engel notes further, 'These idiomatic peculiarities in the Japanese language must, of
course, be understood as a means of avoiding direct reference to persons, the second and
third person pronouns being customarily considered blunt and impolite. Yet, the fact that
architectural designations are distinctly preferred shows that "house" in Japan has retained
its original integrity - oneness of shelter, family, and man.' While most certainly
characteristic, this mode of reference is not exclusive to Japanese. I wish to thank Ralph P.
Locke for reminding me that in German women can be referred to as FrauenZimmer, and
Derek B. Scott, who notes that a Cockney term for wife is ' 'er indoors.'
41 Chris Fawcett, The New Japanese House: Ritual and Anti-Ritual Patterns of Dwelling (New York,
1980), 73. It is striking also that in the context of Arthur Golden's 'pleasure world' in
Memoirs of a Geisha (New York, 1997), Sayuri, formerly 'Chiyo,' now torn from her family
home and ensconced in her new environment, refers to the head of the household as
'Mother,' a woman who will profit financially from the activities of the girls in her employ.
There is really no precise Western equivalent for this, since it is not a given that those
activities are necessarily sexual. Thus 'Mother' is not necessarily the equivalent of 'Madame.'
See also Atsushi Ueda, The Inner Harmony of the Japanese House (Tokyo and New York, 1990);
Kazuo Nishi and Kazuo Hozumi, What is Japanese Architecture? [Nihon kenchiku no katachzl,
trans., adapted, and with an introduction by H. Mack Horton (Tokyo, New York, and San
Francisco, 1985); William H. Coaldrake, Architecture and Authoriy in Japan, Nissan
Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series (London, 1996); Robert Treat Paine and
Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of Japan, 3rd ed., updated by D. B. Waterhouse and
Bunji Kobayashi, Yale University Press/Pelican History of Art (Hong Kong, 1981); and
Edward S. Morse, Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, new introduction by Terence Barrow
(Rutland, VT, and Tokyo, 1972).

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfly 247

Fawcett's observations apply easily to Madama Butterfly, in which the home is the
scene of Cio-Cio-San's marriage, the birth of her son (presumably), and her
abandonment. How apposite, then, that the opera begins with the house itself, the
first and principal object of conversation, the subject of the action, a tour of which
includes the opening and closing of the shoji.42 To Pinkerton, however, the structure
is as fleeting as the marriage he is about to enter: 'In this country, houses and
contracts are equally flexible. [Sono in questo paese elastici del par, case e contratti.]'
Yet Pinkerton is intent on possession, and he outfits the house with American locks
and bolts, as Long notes in his story, 'to keep out those who are out, and in those
who are in.'43 What Pinkerton cannot fathom is that the locks are unnecessary;
Butterfly's ties to the house are both inward and cultural. Her fidelity is shaken
neither by his absence nor by offers of marriage from the wealthy Yamadori. She
naively imagines her bond to Pinkerton to be a Western phenomenon, and refuses
the Japanese divorce to which an abandoned woman is entitled. Only when she is
convinced that he will not return does she discard her Western veneer, don the obi,
retire behind a screen, and end her life - in the house, 'the place,' Fawcett notes,
'where suicide is most likely to occur.'44

Butterfly's vigil

Rubens Tedeschi has pointed out that Madama Butterfly centers around two
'sacrifices.'45 In the original two-act version of the opera, these sacrifices provided
symmetry: at the end of the first part, Butterfly sacrifices her virginity, and at the end
of the second part she sacrifices her life. Both sacrifices are not only ceremonial, but
also sexual: the first explicitly and the second implicitly, as the knife penetrates her
flesh.

The Vigil scene stands between these 'sacrifices' as a fulcrum, the point of
maximum dramatic tension. And it is undoubtedly the scene to which Puccini
referred when he insisted that all the 'particulars' of Belasco's play be included in the
libretto of his new opera.
In fact, it is the Vigil scene, the extraordinary moment at the core of the drama,
to which David Belasco attributed the success of his one-act play, Madame Butterfly.
As he wrote in his memoir, The Theater Through the Stage Door.

42 Loti had a similar house tour, and it is specifically the opening and closing of the exterior
screens that marked his aural memory: 'The noise of the innumerable wooden panels which
at the fall of night are pulled shut in every Japanese house, is one of the peculiarities of a
country which will remain longest imprinted on my memory. From our neighbor's houses,
floating to us over the green gardens, these noises reach us one after the other, in series,
more or less deadened, more or less distant.' See Loti/Ensor 139, and Loti/original (n. 12),
121.

43 Long, 'Madame Butterfly' (n. 13), 26.

44 Fawcett, The New Japanese House (n. 41), 44.
45 Rubens Tedeschi, Addio fiorito asil: il melodramma italiano da Rossini al verismo (Pordenone,
1992), 122.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
248 Helen M. Greenwald

I have been asked many times what I consider my successful achievement in stirring the
imagination through the agencies of acting. I invariably reply that the scene of the passing
of an entire night in 'Madame Butterfly' has been my most successful effort in appealing t
the imaginations of those who have sat before my stage. To portray this episode, Blanche
Bates was compelled to hold the stage for fourteen minutes without uttering a word. So t
keep an audience's imagination stirred - to persuade it that what it was witnessing w
real - it was necessary to have a scene of changing beauty ... its success was due entirely
to its imaginative appeal.46

It was a theatrical coup, indeed, as a time lapse of twelve hours from sunset to th
following morning was unfolded magnificently through changing lighting effect
achieved through the use of colored silks. It was an elaborate process, devised by
Louis Hartmann, Belasco's lighting technician:

The several colors of silk were in long strips. These strips were attached to the tin roller
the rollers were set into bearings fastened to a wooden frame that slid into the color groov
of the lamp. The turning of the rollers passed the colors in front of the light and they wer
projected on the windows in a series of soft blends. As the orange deepened into blue, floor
lanterns were brought on the scene and lighted, as the pink of the morning light as seen th
lanterns flickered out one by one. The light changes were accompanied by special music.
Music and lights were perfectly timed and the entire change consumed less than thr
minutes. By the manipulation of lights and music David Belasco made it convincing to an
audience that a period of twelve hours had passed.47

Puccini, who saw Madame Butterfl in London in 1900, was enthralled by it.4
Belasco's approach had resonated profoundly with his own ideas about spectacl
and about communication in the theatre;49 and a comparison of the stage direction
for the Vigil scene in both the opera and the play reveals the close relationshi
between the two. In the opera,

Suzuki closes the shoji at the back and lowers all the shades in the room. Butterfly leads th
baby to the shoji, in which she makes three holes: one high up for herself, one lower for
Suzuki and the third lower still for the child, whom she seats on a cushion, showing him
how to look through the hole she made for him. Suzuki crouches down and also peers out
Butterly stands before the highest hole and keeps watch through it, remaining rigid and

46 David Belasco, The Theater Through its Stage Door, ed. Louis V. Defoe (New York and
London, 1919), 237-8.
47 See Louis Hartmann, Theatre Lighting A Manual of the Stage Switchboard, foreword by David
Belasco (New York, 1930; repr., 1970), 17-18. Hartmann's remark about the three-minute
length of the change must refer to an element of the process. See also Helen M.
Greenwald, 'Realism on the Opera Stage: Belasco, Puccini, and the California Sunset,' in
Opera in Context: Essays on Historical Staging from the Late Renaissance to the Time of Puccini, ed.
Mark Radice (Portland, OR, 1998), 283-4.
48 It was playing at the Duke of York Theatre as part of a double-bill with Miss Nobbs by
Jerome K. Jerome. See Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini (n. 33), 97.
49 See CP (n. 30), 287, Puccini's letter to Illica of 16 November 1902, in which he makes
clear the limited parameters of his desired libretto.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfy 249

motionless as a statue. The baby, who is between his mother and Suzuki, peeps out
curiously. Very slowly, night begins to fall.50

These instructions are clearly modeled on Belasco's:

Putting the flag in the child's hand, she takes it up to the window and makes three holes in
the shoji, one low down for the baby. As the three look through the shoji, they form the
picture she has already described. During the vigil, the night comes on. Suzuki lights
the floor lamps, the stars come out, the dawn breaks, the floor lights flicker out one by one,
the birds begin to sing, and the day discovers Suzuki and the baby fast asleep on the floor;
but Madame Butterfly is awake still watching, her face white and strained. She reaches out
her hands and rouses Suzuki.51

The idea of a vigil behind the shoji probably originated in Jennie Long Correll's
account of the story, which, as published 1931 in The Japan Magazine, relates the
'vigil' segment of the story as follows: 'Many an hour and many a long night did she
peer from her shoji over the lovely harbour, but to no purpose: he never returned.'52
Mrs. Correll's talk to the Pan-Pacific Club on 13 March 1931 (six months earlier)
is a little more elaborate: 'When he left her he made promises that he would return
soon, and there was a signal to be given when his ship came, so she waited and
broke her little shoji open to look out, but never a sign.'53 Long enlarged the event
in his short story, and put a negative spin on 'Cho-Cho-San's' puncturing of the
shoji: 'They hid behind the shoji, recklessly making peep-holes with their dampened
fingers, as they had planned. There was one very low down for the baby, so that he
could sit on the mats - which he did not choose to do - and one each for the
others. Cho-Cho-San sang as she fixed herself at her peep-hole - so as not to
disarrange her finery.'54
Yet despite the apparently authentic source for the incident, Belasco's success and
consequent pride as well as Puccini's fascination, the Vigil is, nonetheless, Puccini's
most static scene, an anomaly among his works, which are known for their brisk
pace and forward momentum. Moreover, several recent productions of Madama
Buttefly reveal the Vigil to be the one scene in the opera directors seem most loath
to stage literally. Thus, for example, Harold Prince, in his 1989 Lyric Opera of
Chicago production, fills the time by having Suzuki take the little boy into the
garden to look at the stars. Butterfly is not visible at all, as she disappears into the
wings to change costume. In Gian-Carlo del Monaco's 1994 Metropolitan Opera
production, Butterfly never even goes into the house, and while Suzuki is visible in
the background as she performs household chores, Butterfly points out harbor
sights to her young son. In his 1995 film, Frederic Mitterrand, who labored over the

50 ENO 26 (see n. 13), 114. Tomie Hahn (personal communication) notes that the act of
punching a hole in the shoji simply would not be allowed in a Japanese household.
However, she has suggested that in the context of Madama Butterfly, this intrusive gesture
'marks the slow destruction of the house as her life is also taking this same turn. The
marks on the house are marks on her soul and have fatal consequences.'
51 David Belasco, Madame Butterfly (see n. 14), 631.
52 See Groos, 'Madame Butterfly: the Story' (see n. 11), 127-30.
53 Ibid., 130, n. 16.
54 Long, 'Madame Butterfly' (n. 13), 53.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
250 Helen M. Greenwald

physical background in his recreation of a seaside village (on a harbor in Tunisia),

avoids the issue altogether by splicing in a variety of early twentieth-century
newsreels.

Beyond creative license, modern directors, burdened, perhaps, by the hyperac-

tivity and special effects of current musical theatre and cinema, seem uncomfortable
with the length, stillness, and inactivity of the scene. New York City Opera director
Frank Corsaro addressed the first problem in his memoir, Maverick, noting, 'I had
devised all sorts of action for Butterfly as she awaited her man, but my inventions
clearly indicated how interminable the La Scala first night must have been. No
wonder the last act had no effect.'55 Ultimately Corsaro resigned himself to a more
or less traditional realization of the scene, which he described in his production
book:

By the time the brasses in the orchestra intone their chorale, the three figures are behind the
screen: Butterfly proceeds to poke holes in the paper shoji so they may best see Pinkerton's
entrance. At thefortepiano brass Butterfly turns panic stricken. 'He will not come to us', she
thinks. Suzuki touches her hand reassuringly. Butterfly relaxes. The business is completed
by theppp that ushers in the humming chorus. All three remain stock still from here on, their
backs to the audience as they peer through the shoji. Little Trouble falls asleep and the
moon lights up the room. By the conclusion of the chorus, the three are silhouetted behind
the screen. An almost votive light seems to illuminate the tokonoma. All is stillness as the
music fades. On this nocturnal vision of hope and expectancy, the curtain falls slowly.56

David J. Levin would argue that such an 'obedient' staging is a 'weak reading' that
'merely seeks to present the work in its most familiar form.'57 Yet not only does the
scene mirror the stillness of the Japanese dwelling, but closer scrutiny reveals that
the image of a woman behind a screen is common in the visual representation of
the geisha, and most especially of its sex-as-drama ethic. As Elizabeth de Sabato
Swinton has noted, in the artwork of the Ukiyo-e, the floating world (the Yoshiwara
pleasure district of the Edo), 'a polite fiction existed that life was a performance.'58

55 Frank Corsaro, Maverick: A Director's Personal Experience in Opera and Theater (New York,
1978), 65. Corsaro also claims (65) that Belasco heightened his affect by '[wafting] perfume
or incense into the house to dramatize the flower-festooned abode, while a small orchestra
of samisens played behind the scene during the eight-minute change. Air conditioning at the
State Theatre had kiboshed that lovely notion.' Corsaro's (undocumented) comment about
the timing conflicts with reports by both Belasco and Hartmann (see above). Ashbrook,
The Operas of Puccini (see n. 33), 97, avoids absolutes by setting the time at 'more than ten
minutes.'
56 Corsaro, Maverick, 254-5.
57 David J. Levin, 'Reading a Staging/Staging a Reading,' this journal, 9 (1997), 52.
58 Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton, 'Reflections on the Floating World,' in Women of the Pleasure
Quarter Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Floating World, ed. Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton
(New York, 1996), 26. See also Paine and Soper, The Art and Architecture ofJapan (n. 41),
245, who note that these depictions '[emphasized] the contemporary scene in preference to
an ennobling idealism'; Donald Jenkins, The Floating World Revisited, Portland Art Museum
October 26 through December 30, 1993; Cleveland Museum of Art, February 2 through
April 2, 1994 (Honolulu, 1993); and Akiyama Terukazu, Treasures of Asia: Japanese Painting
(New York, 1990).

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfly 251

Ceremonies and screens

Central to the idea of 'life as performance' is the ceremonial aspect of th

sacrificial events as well as Cio-Cio-San's consistently formal behavior, to
Puccini and his librettists paid great attention, and which reflects the ritual ele
of the mundane found in many of the Yoshiwara woodblock prints. These wo
block prints, termed 'translated photography' by Mercedes Viale Ferrero,59 w
viewed as meaningful (if not literal) analogues to specific moments in Puc
opera, provide a new and more authentic anthropology for Cio-Cio-San an
theatrical milieu. This iconographical parallel is made most clear through the stu
four interrelated ceremonial scenes of the opera: Butterfly's entrance, her wed
night, her Vigil, and her suicide. Of these, the Vigil scene is the most centra
enigmatic, while the 'entrance' scene functions as an introduction to the other t
Moreover, in the wedding night-vigil-suicide sequence, Puccini emphasizes the v
as he suspends conventional vocal dialogue and presents each as a 'dumb-show,
only moments in the opera that are actually silent on stage, essentially orchestral, w
the Vigil scene including an off-stage humming chorus. Most important, togeth
cycle of scenes forms an often overlooked or misread strand of the drama, all sh
a material common denominator and cultural artifact, the screen, a key elem
Japanese woodcuts, many of which feature the external shoji of the Japanese ho
a dramatically situated screen. How striking, then, that screen imagery perm
Madama Butterfly from the moment the curtain rises on Goro's demonstration o
shoji to Pinkerton to the screen that shields us from the graphic violence of Butterf
suicide. Thus, when Pinkerton remarks to Sharpless that Butterfly 'seems to
stepped straight from a screen [sembra una figura da paravento],' not only ar
remarks most meaningful, but his point of reference is very likely to have bee
many artworks that made their way West in the nineteenth century.60
Butterfly's behavior throughout the opening scene is consistently formal, a
that of her friends and family, both men and women, all of whom bow
introduced to Pinkerton. Most formal, however, is the entourage of geisha
family that proceeds slowly and deliberately up the hill, announced first by Go
then by the off-stage voices of Butterfly and her friends. This spectacular entr
then, as depicted with entourage and parasols in Leopoldo Metlicovitz's con
porary (to the premiere) drawing of Butterfly on promenade61 (Fig. 2) could
been modeled on one of many woodcuts of geisha in full regalia in procession
the streets of the Yoshiwara, for example the portrait, 'Yoyoyama of the Matsu
by the nineteenth-century artist Kikugawa Eizan.62 (Fig. 3) A walk out of door
an extraordinary ceremony, and to embark on such a 'journey,' the geisha woul

59 Viale Ferrero, 'Riflessioni' (n. 6), 31-3.

60 See Cesare Garboli, 'Sembra una figura da paravento,' Quadernipucciniani (1982), 91-102,
and Viale Ferrero, 'Riflessioni.'
61 Reproductions of seven of Leopoldo Metlicovitz's original color drawings for Ricordi may
be found in Teatro alla scala (n. 28), 82-5. Metlicovitz was one of the most important post
designers employed by the Ricordi publishing company at the turn of the twentieth centur
See Francesco Degrada et al., Musica Musicisti Editoria: 175 Anni di Casa Ricordi, 1808-1983
(Milan, 1983) and Claudio Sartori, ed., Casa Ricordi, 1808-1958 (Milan, 1958).
62 Swinton, 'Reflections,' (n. 58), catalogue no. 14a and plate 76, 120.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
252 Helen M. Greenwald

Fig. 2: Leopold Metlicovitz, cartolina, Cio-Cio-San with Parasol. Reproduced with permiss
of the Archivio Storico Ricordi. All rights reserved.

on her best clothing and never appear unescorted, especially since, as Swinton note
a woman was always on view and 'glamour' was essential.63 As Cecilia Segawa Seig
explains it, the outdoor procession - arranged in a hierarchy that originated in t
ceremonies of Kabuki theatre- could be a most 'formal occasion [consisting]
some twenty or twenty-one persons,' proceeding at a stylized gait in a 'figure-eigh
walk.'64 Butterfly's entrance is reminiscent in color and character of various kinds
formalized promenades in the Yoshiwara, not least the presentation of a new
courtesan or oiran, who is always accompanied, and attired in the best finery.65

63 Ibid., 121.
64 See Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan (Honolulu,
1993), 225-8. Diagrams of a formal procession and the direction of a 'Simplified
Outward-Eight' step, excerpted from Nakamura Shikaku, Yukaku no Sekai [The World of the
Pleasure Quarted (Tokyo, 1976), 78, are illustrated on 226-7.
65 On the issue of the ceremonial presentation of a new geisha or courtesan, see Seigle, 184-7.
As noted by seventeenth-century ukio-e writers, Ihara Saikaku and Isogai Sutwaka, 'a
procession can be the beginning of an important love affair, an opportunity to impress and
entice men.... When men witness such a sight, they go insane and spend money they are
entrusted with, even if it means literally losing their heads the next day.' See Shin-Yoshiwara
Tsunegunegusa [Perennial Grass of the New Yoshiwara], 1689, Teihon Saikaku genshu, 6: 243, in
Seigle, Yoshiwara, 77; also Gary Hickey, Beauty & Desire in Edo Period Japan, National Gallery
of Australia 6 June-9 August, 1998 (London, 1998), 26.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfl 253

Fig. 3: Kikugawa Eizan, woodblock print, Yoyoyama of the Matsubaa (1830s). Reproduced by
permission of the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Cio-Cio-San prepares for lovemaking no less ceremonially, aware of and

conditioned to the aesthetic that life, and especially sex, are 'performance' art.
Historically, tremendous emphasis was placed upon ritual and performance; 'buying
a high-class courtesan was a form of theater, and ... shared a close relationship with
Kabuki, the other great theatrical art of the time.'66 The consummation of the
physical relationship took place only after numerous 'chaste' encounters (as we are
to understand have taken place between Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San before the
curtain rises), a delay that was in itself ceremonial and served to increase desire and
'add to the mystique of the courtesan.'67 In essence, foreplay in the Eastern aesthetic
involved a series of polite (and clothed) exchanges over an extended period of time
as opposed to the Western concept of a variety of physical gestures employed in the

66 Swinton, 'Reflections' (n. 58), 32.

67 See Hickey, Beauty & Desire (n. 65), 21.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
254 Helen M. Greenwald

act of lovemaking itself, intended to arouse the lovers. That the emphasis lay on
ceremony rather than sexual technique specifically is made clear with stark reality i
Arthur Golden's novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, by Dr. Crab's developing interest in an
purchase of Sayuri's mizuage (the ceremonial deflowering of a new geisha), ritualize
in the extreme by his obsessive taking of a sample of her hymenal blood in a vial
to be added to his collection. For the event Sayuri receives explicit instructions,
including the wearing of 'an under-robe of red, which is the color of new
beginnings.'68 Thus it may follow that for Cio-Cio-San - and most especially as a
fifteen-year-old - her wedding night is the mzuage or ritual sexual initiation that sh
might have undergone (at least in her fantasy), had she taken the path of th
high-class courtesan or oiran upon reaching late adolescence.69
The wedding night or 'love duet' begins at nightfall, as Pinkerton orders the shoj
to be closed, and Butterfly retreats within the house to get ready:

Pinkerton claps his hands. The servants run away. Butterfly goes into the house and, assist
by Suzuki, carefully makes her preparations for the night, removing her wedding attire an
putting on an all-white kimono. Then she sits on a cushion and, looking at herself in a littl
mirror, arranges her hair. Suzuki exits.70

In a scene of sexual intensity nearly unprecedented in opera, Pinkerton, smoking

cigarette, sheds his jacket, and leers through the shoji, nearly overcome by his desir
to possess the 'giocattolo [plaything],' as Butterfly ceremoniously removes her ob
with the assistance of Suzuki ('Quest'obi pomposa di scioglier mi tarda'). Ponnelle,
in his 1974 film of Madama Butterfy, juxtaposes clearly Pinkerton's crude voyeurism

68 See Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha (n. 41), 280-4.

69 See Seigle, Yoshiwara (n. 64), 179-81 and Liza Dalby, Geisha (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1983; 1998), 109-10. This would not necessarily have been the case, however. Women
entered these services as children, and as they developed, their fate would be determined
and they would learn a number of different professions. If they were destined for the
highest-ranking courtesanship, they would undergo a ritual sexual initiation. See Liza Dalby,
'Courtesan and Geisha: the Real Women of the Pleasure Quarter,' in Swinton, Women of the
Pleasure Quarter (n. 58), 59.
70 EN() 26 (see n. 13), 92. [Pinkerton batte le mani. I servi corrono via. Butterfly entra nella
casa ed aiutata da Suzuki a cautelosamente la sua toeletta da notte, levandosi la veste nuziale
ed indossandone una tutta bianca; poi siede su di un cuscino e mirandosi in uno specchietto
si ravvia i capelli. Suzuki esce.] In a variant, Butterfly simply moves upstage to perform her
toilet. Corsaro staged this quite differently, although he was aware of the traditional
directions: 'Suzuki now appears at the shoji and Butterfly asks for her things. (In most
productions this scene is played indoors and refers to Butterfly's toilette. But, pursuing the
idea of the ordinary [sic] of her life, I thought it becoming to re-create Butterfly's first and
only previous encounter with Pinkerton at the geisha house in Nagasaki, the details of
which charmed Pinkerton, so unused to this particular kind of female attention.) Suzuki
returns, carrying a futon; the two servants are behind her, one bearing the samisen (the
musical instrument) and lantern, the other a small tea tray with two cups. Butterfly now
seems in charge, all traces of the frightened girl disappear. Suzuki lays down the futon on
which Butterfly arranges the samisen, the tea, and the lantern. Pinkerton moves onto the
bridge and lighting a cigarette, watches these nocturnal preparations. After the servants exit,
Butterfly asks Suzuki: "Quest'obi pomposa (Help me take off this obi)". ' See Corsaro,
Maverick (n. 55), 242-3.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfy 255

with Cio-Cio-San's veiled exhibitionism in a tableau that seems consistent with what
Lawrence Kramer and others have referred to as that 'traditional patriarchal
institution' of the late nineteenth century: the gaze, which, as Kramer continues,
immobilizes its object, and 'can plausibly be said to rival physical penetration as the
chief means of satisfying sexual desire.'71 Yet this interpretation is inadequate, as it
fails to account for a woman's possible pleasure in being looked at, except in the
case of a sexually aggressive and exotic woman like Salome, who is able to subvert
the gaze and 'subjugate the eye that subjugates her.'72 It also assumes a dichotomy
between the 'household nun' and the 'whore' which is alien to Japanese culture.73
As Dalby has noted, there is no such division here, since for both the Japanese wife
and Japanese courtesan, the 'Madonna/whore distinction of Christian tradition' was
simply not an issue; 'sex was definitely part of the role of each.'74 Moreover, under
the terms of courtesan ritual, the more highly stylized the pleasure, the better; and
a woman could openly express her own pleasure without fear of condemnation. We
find, then, that the wedding night tableau is not merely another example of theatrical
scopophilia,75 for Butterfly is immobilized only in Pinkerton's imagination. She is
keenly aware that she is being watched and acknowledges as much to Suzuki:
'He's peeping and smiling! [Tra motti sommessi sorride ... mi guarda!].' She
blushes and commands Suzuki to remove her obi (see above), a gesture that
Swinton identifies in Yoshiwara iconography as a specific 'visible metaphor,
denoting the intention to sleep with someone.'76 This is illustrated as a maidservant
holds a kimono while the courtesan unties her obi in a tableau entitled, 'The
Hour of the Rat,' one of a series of twelve woodblocks from the late eighteenth
century collectively titled The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara - each bearing the name of
a sign in the East Asian Zodiac and depicting a two-hour period in a courtesan's day
(Fig. 4).77
Along with tremendous emphasis upon the theatrics of love-making, voyeurism
was an especially popular theme in the Yoshiwara, with many erotic prints featuring
a superficial gesture in the form of a free-standing screen as the barest homage to
privacy. Pleasure could be derived, however, even from watching a woman who
might not be engaged in a sexual activity, illustrated here by Suzuki Harunobu's
woodblock from the 1760s, Looking In on Her, in which two men 'peep' through

1 Lawrence Kramer, 'Culture and Musical Hermeneutics: the Salome Complex,' this journal, 2
(1990), 273-4.
72 Kramer, 'The Salome Complex,' 274-80. See also Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies
of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture (New York and Oxford, 1986).
73 See Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gate (New Haven, 1983), 145, and
cited by Lawrence Kramer, 'Liszt, Goethe, and the Discourse of Gender,' in Music as
Cultural Practice, 1800-1900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), 110. See also Dijkstra, Idols of
Perversity, esp. Chapter 1, 3-24, and Chapter 11, 352-402.
74 Dalby, 'Courtesan and Geisha' (see n. 69), 55.
75 See LauraMulvey, /isual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989),
especially14-26.
76 Swinton, 'Reflections' (see n. 58), 61.
77 Swinton, 'Reflections' (see n. 58), Catalogue no. 102c, Plate no. 39, here entitled 'The
Twelve Hours of the Green Houses,' 61.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
256 Helen M. Greenwald

Fig. 4: Kitagawa Utamaro, woodblock print, 'The Hour of the Rat', from the series T
Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (1794). Gift of Miss Katherine S. Buckingham to the Clarence
Buckingham Collection. ( The Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved.

an open window (a less elegant barrier than a moveable screen) at a woman w

is painting a scroll (Fig. 5).78
This voyeuristic aspect of courtship and lovemaking resurfaces most clearly in th
opera in Butterfly's imaginary scenario of Pinkerton's return, 'Un bel di,' a fantas
re-enactment of her wedding night, where she sings of how she will hide behind t
screen and be discovered, and how she will hear Pinkerton call 'Butterfly! Butterfly
from afar. The Vigil is thus fantasy made real, and Cio-Cio-San prepares for it wi
all the hope of fulfilling that ideal, as she puts on her wedding dress and station
herself at the shoji. It would have been entirely inappropriate for her to leave th
house to seek out Pinkerton by going to the harbor to meet him. As Long puts i
in his short story: 'She did not think of going to him. In destroying her Japane
conventions this was the one thing that had been left. In "Onna Yushoku Mib

78 Swinton, 'Reflections,' Catalogue no. 17, plate 54, here entitled, 'Two Men Watching a
Courtesan Through a Window,' p. 89. See also Wu Hung, The Double Screen: Medium and
Representation in Chinese Painting (Chicago, 1996), 9-13. Screens as well as screen imagery and
their relationship to ceremonial courtship originated in China. As Nancy Berliner notes in
Beyond the Screen: Chinese Furniture of the 16th and 17th Centuries (Boston, 1996), 47, the
screens, in addition to their special status as props in Ming fiction, also served to 'shield
women from the gaze of men.'

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfy 257

Fig. 5: Suzuki Harunobu (1724-1770), woodblock print, Looking in on Her. Used by

permission of the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Bunko" [The Young Ladies' Old Book of Decorum] she had read that the only
woman who seeks a male is ayjjo, a courtesan,'79 something she no longer wishes
to be. Nonetheless, she will sit and wait for him, patiently and ceremoniously behind
the screen, silent and still. Such stylized waiting was perfectly acceptable in geisha
ritual, and mostly as a part of role-playing, but not always.80 An extreme
dramatization of the situation (as in the opera) could even result in the
'love-suicide,' a 'mystical' and observed ritual, understood by the Edo-period
Japanese as the 'ultimate romantic gesture.'81 Dalby notes that 'for the courtesans

79 Long, 'Madame Butterfly' (see n. 13), 55.

80 See Swinton, 'Reflections' (n. 58), 26, who notes, 'Both courtesan and client knew that
sworn statements of love and devotion were expected but not necessarily sincere elements
in the game of courtesan-client relationships.' Clients were often married, and while many
of them did take a mistress from among the Geisha, these women were often referred to as
keisei, 'castle-toppler' (Dalby, 'Courtesan and Geisha' [n. 68], 54): a classical Chinese
reference alluding to the power of a woman's beauty to bring down a kingdom'; in other
words, a 'home-wrecker.' Dalby (ibid.) cites yet another term, jykaku, which 'literally means
enclosure for entertainment.'
81 Dalby, 'Courtesan and Geisha' (see n. 68), 53.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
258 Helen M. Greenwald

themselves, raised in an isolated world where dreams and fantasy were the stuff of
their everyday work, it is easy to see how they could be caught up in an affair of th
heart - with tragic results.' Moreover, according to Seigle, the geisha were apt to
'retreat into a reassuring fantasy where they waited to be rescued by a romanticize
hero-lover,'82 often waiting in vain for a man to take her away from the professio
(a return to which is anathema for Cio-Cio-San, as she has told Sharpless).83
At the end of the opera Butterfly returns to ancient ritual to take her life with her
father's own dagger, replaying the scene one more time, and this time really hearin
Pinkerton's voice. And here, again, is another scene in which directors, perhaps in
search of the new, are most likely to meddle. Thus, in an early staging of h
Metropolitan Opera production, del Monaco, in a rendering more akin to gran
guignol than cultural reality, shows Butterfly in silhouette, as she plunges the dagge
into her heart and falls through the outer wall of the house, destroying the shoji i
an utterly unthinkable act.84 Del Monaco's staging seems to be a misreading of th
final moments of Ponnelle's film, where Ponnelle actually rewrites the script by
allowing Pinkerton to arrive in time to witness the sacrifice. At first glance, suc
revision also seems blasphemous, but Ponnelle's emphasis on ceremony and setting
ultimately reveal the alteration to be consonant with Puccini's cyclic drama as we
as the practice of ritual suicide and its mythic connection with the home, an
specifically, the screen. Thus, as Butterfly sits wide-eyed, but unseeing, before a
interior screened wall (fusama), decorated with birds in flight, Suzuki ties her legs t
ensure that she will not fall in an undignified way. The final moments compellingl
attest to Ponnelle's profound and consistent investment in both character an
milieu, as the cowardly and horrified Westerner, Pinkerton, flees the scene b
crashing through and destroying the shoji, the exterior screened wall, the character
istic architectural component of the Japanese house.

Conclusion

The most fundamental difficulty of dramatizing the story of Madame Butterfly

task confronting the Westerner- Puccini, and any number of stage an
directors such as Corsaro, Prince, Mitterrand, Ponnelle, and del Monaco
ideas have been criticized here - who attempts to re-create something non-W
Minimalist composer Steve Reich, who has often professed interest in A
Balinese, Indian, Javanese, Korean, and Japanese music, suggests that rathe
trying to imitate the sound of an 'exotic' music, a composer might create a
respectful and possibly even more 'authentic' composition by absorbin
Western source materials into his personal sound world,85 as we might con
Puccini has done in Madama Butterfy, both musically and scenically. The dif

82 Seigle, Yoshiwara (see n. 63), 180.

83 See Kazue Edamatsu Campbell, 'The Language of the Pleasure Quarter,' in Swinton, Wo
of the Pleasure Quarter (n. 58), 81.
84 See n. 49.
85 Steve Reich, 'Postscript to a Brief Study of Balinese and African Music,' in Writings About
Music (Halifax and New York, 1974), 40.

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 House, screen, and ceremony in Puccini's Madama Butterfly 259

however, is greater still for theatrical and especially film interpreters of Puccini's
opera, who work in a medium already several levels removed from both the
'authentic' sources and Puccini's fascinating score and emblematic scenario.
Moreover, as a very narrowly focused character study, Madama Butterfl might even
be thought of as a monodrama in which nearly everyone else (including Pinkerton)
can be regarded ultimately as subordinate to the heroine's progress towards
self-realization. And in this context what we see - the house, the screen, and the
gesture- attains greater significance, perhaps as much as words and music, to
provide a deeper avenue into Cio-Cio-San's persona and reveal at the same time a
new layer of cultural authenticity in Madama Butterfl. As Thomas Heck has discussed
in his recent monograph on methods and examples of musical iconography, pictures
can be read in order to deduce past practice.86 Pictures, however, can also
communicate subtleties of emotion and esthetics, perhaps especially in a culture that
values ritual, patience, and above all, stillness.87 Thus, in the case of Madama Butterf,
she who sits and waits, the pictures - woodblocks and stage tableaux - that
contextualize this work can teach us both to appreciate and to re-create the elusive
'authenticity' of her character and behaviour, which is manifest as inner reality
rather than in superficial trappings.

86 See Thomas F. Heck, Picturing Performance: The Iconography of the Performing A rts in Concept and
Practice (Rochester, NY, 1999), whose title inspired mine.
87 The theatrical sine qua non of that stillness would be the practice of the no theatre, which
values immobility and silence. See Royall Tyler, ed. and trans., Japanese No Dramas (London,
1992); On the Art of the No Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami, trans. J. Thomas Rimer and
Yamazaki Masakazu (Princeton, 1984); and W. Anthony Sheppard, Revealing Masks: Exotic
Influences and RitualiZed Performance in Modernist Music Theatre (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
2001).

This content downloaded from 134.219.227.22 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:25:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms