with an assessment of the ways in which this mixed Asian figure becomes manifest as a problem for contemporary law and culture.
Prologue: A Brief History of the Three Butterflies
It is little coincidence that the publication and dissemination of the various versions of Madame Butterfly occurred during a period of increased anxiety about the threats posed to national and racial borders by Asian bodies flowing in and out of the sphere of the US empire. Long’s novella was published in 1898, sixteen years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the same year that the United States officially began both the colonization of the Philippines and the illegal annexation of Hawai‘i. At the end of the nineteenth century, US border definition was threatened by the empire’s territorial expansion outward and the need to draw foreign bodies inward in order to satiate the needs of expanding capital.10 Legal and cultural apparatuses thus began to mark Asians as the exception to national, legal, and cultural forms of theatrical as a means of managing and containing the crisis that they posed to the constitution of ideal borders and national subjects. As a representative of the dominant culture’s juridical unconscious, Madame Butterfly exemplifies Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns’s assertion that US American popular culture is “part of the ideological state apparatus that extend[s] U.S. cultural hegemony” and empire.11 It manifests and embodies the racial ideology of the dominant culture through aesthetic means.
The short synopsis of all three narratives is this: a US officer, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, is stationed in Nagasaki, Japan. Beset by boredom, he takes a fourteen-year-old Japanese wife—Cho-Cho-San (or Cio-Cio-San in the opera). Eventually Pinkerton abandons his Japanese child-bride, who remains steadfast in the belief that he will return. In his absence, she raises their son, curiously named Trouble. Importantly, Trouble was born after Pinkerton’s departure and without his knowledge. Pinkerton’s friend Sharpless, a US consular officer, remains concerned for the young woman and her son and attempts to convince the girl to remarry. She declines, believing that her marriage is protected by the laws governing marriage in the United States and that she will be able to press her case in a US court, if necessary. Pinkerton eventually returns from the states but—to Cho-Cho-San’s great horror—with a white (US American) wife. As a result, Cho-Cho-San kills herself in the hopes that Pinkerton will claim and raise his son.
John Luther Long never set foot in Japan, and according to opera historian Arthur Groos, much of his narrative was pieced together from collaboration with Long’s elder sister, Jennie Correll. Correll lived in Nagasaki for a number of years as a missionary before returning to the United States in 1897.12 The centrality of the question of law in the three versions of Madame Butterfly may have been an accident of autobiography, as Long did not make his living as a novelist and dramatist but as a lawyer.13 The story first reached the upper- and middle-class audience of Century Magazine in January 1898. It proved so popular that the magazine published a reprint in book format and in 1903 released a “Japanese edition” with illustrations. The general excitement with which the story was received was, no doubt, aided by the fact that, as noted earlier, 1898 was a significant year in the history of US imperial expansion into the Pacific.
Audiences in the United States were hungry for exotic stories of the Far East, and shortly after the book’s publication, Long collaborated with theater impresario David Belasco to adapt the story into a one-act play. A one-act version of Madame Butterfly premiered at New York’s Herald Square Theater at 10:00 p.m. on May 5, 1900, with a production price of $4,000.14 The play’s literary merits are less impressive than its historical and cultural significance, and it was a success primarily because of Belasco’s trademark technological innovation. The production received rave reviews and wowed audiences with its incorporation of emergent visual technologies made possible by the shift from gas to electric lighting. Belasco fused novel design elements with extreme naturalist conventions to produce an air of authenticity, convincing audiences that they were seeing an accurate representation of Japan and Japanese femininity.
Belasco wanted to use the magic of the theater to transport audiences into an exotic and otherworldly Japan. Reviewers reveled in the technological sophistication of the show, beginning with the opening moment in which, according to one review, a “drop curtain arose, disclosing another curtain split in the middle and bearing typical Japanese figures.”15 This gave way to a series of lushly painted screens depicting scenes from Japanese country life, described in the New York Times thus: “Beautifully illuminated views of the land of cherry blossoms in the time of cherry blossoms are shown. The setting sun illuminates the dome peak of Fujisan. There is one lovely water view. Thus, gradually, one is taken to Cho-Cho-San’s dainty little cottage, which is a perfect picture in all its details.”16 The set was a stunning performance of what Belasco imagined a Japanese home to be: walls lined with shoji screens, murals covering the fixed internal walls, and rich light pouring in from all angles. Another reviewer wrote, “Its pictures of Japanese life and domestic customs, . . . its brilliant display of color, its changing light effects, combine to make it a show that will be much talked about and that many persons will want to see.”17 This assessment proved correct, and audiences flocked to the production.
One of the primary draws of the evening was the technological simulation of the passage of time in an extended scene in which Cho-Cho-San waits through the night for Pinkerton’s return. The success of this spectacle must have been at least somewhat compelling, as actress Blanche Bates held the audience rapt for no less than fourteen minutes as she sat perfectly still in absolute silence as lighting effects evoked the breaking dawn amid the sounds of singing birds.18 As columnist Alan Dale waxed, “Even if I forget the story of ‘Mme. Butterfly’ the picture of Cho-Cho-San standing at the window from evening till night and from night till morning will remain impressed upon my memory.”19 The success of the production resulted in the transfer of an expanded three-act version of the play to London’s West End a few months later.
In London, the narrative architecture of Long’s story was once more kept in place, and most of the expansions aimed to give the characters increased psychological heft or to give audiences more of the exciting design elements that made the production a hit in New York. It starred ingénue Evelyn Millard in the title role, whose appearance was greatly anticipated in the press and was featured in a cover story for the Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News.20 Opera composer Giacomo Puccini sat in one of the audiences of the London production and soon after attained Belasco’s permission to adapt the story/play into an opera. Madama Butterfly debuted to a mixed reception at La Scala on February 17, 1904, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. After various revisions, a robust version returned to New York with a premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House on February 11, 1907, with famed soprano Geraldine Farrar in the title role.21 Again, the narrative remained fairly intact, with the majority of the adaptations made to accommodate Puccini’s lush Orientalist score. Shortly after this, Puccini completed revisions on what was to become the standard version of Madama Butterfly.
Madama Butterfly remains one of Puccini’s most popular operas in the United States and across the globe. Although my analysis of Belasco’s dramatization will reconstruct sections of the original one-act production that debuted in New York in 1900, my descriptions of the opera are drawn from the Met’s 2006 production, directed by the late Anthony Minghella. I turn to this particular production for a number of reasons. The production is part of the Metropolitan Opera’s recent mission to update its repertoires to draw in new audiences. This mission is based on the presupposition that classical operas, such as Madama Butterfly, maintain their cultural relevance and social importance in the twenty-first century. To promote the opera, the production was broadcast live in Times Square. It continues to be broadcast to movie theaters throughout the country and, indeed, the world. It is also available for purchase in DVD format or for viewing on the Met’s website for a small fee. If the argument can be made that Madama Butterfly is a relic of another era, I would suggest that the Met’s mediated promotion and hyperdistribution of Minghella’s production
