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I found this in today’s Daily Telegraph, an attack on the much-loved opera Madame Butterfly.

.....yesterday's attack, from a renowned opera scholar intending to cause mischief, stirred the soul of opera fans across the country.

Professor Roger Parker, a teacher of music at King's College London and a Puccini specialist, suggested that opera audiences could be unwitting participants in racism because of the stereotypes Madama Butterfly contains.

Oddly, Parker doesn’t pick up on the feminist issues involved in the opera.

Read the Complete article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...14/nopera14.xml

Seen through the eyes of modern day audiences the opera certainly is racist, just as Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is anti Semitic, his Taming of the Shrew misogynistic and Henry V the glorification of a war criminal. It’s misleading of Prof. Parker to make comparisons with modern day Shakespearean productions because whatever ideas they have about staging, directors leave the text alone along with the odious sentiments contained within that text.

The current Butterfly at Covent Garden has been very popular, it is a powerful production that had my male companion and myself in tears when we last saw it about a year ago. For my own part though, I always feel at the end of the opera that I’d like to give Pinkerton a good kicking.

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Talking about racism in old works when such things were the norm amounts to the most ridiculous kind of 'scholarship' imaginable. It's really just ignorant, how is this professor able to hold down any kind of job in the Arts I'd like to know. Wow, someone was racist and not politically correct in the 19th century, so poor audiences members who have never been exposed to any other thinking except that contained in 'Madama Butterfly' may be 'unwitting participants in racism'. Well, if people can get away with writing this sort of rot and still hold jobs, surely 'The Birth of a Nation' must have already been deleted from all Netflix, libraries and video stores, since all audiences will automatically participate and even join the KKK if they see it.

This one surely takes the cake for most grotesque opinionette espoused in the last 5 years. One can only be grateful he doesn't pick on the 'feminist issues' and anything else for that matter. And they call this a scholar?

Frankly, I think anyone who saw 'The Queen' was trying to raise money so she can get her yacht back and keep whatever taxes she pays secret. I didn't see it, so I must be one of the few truly democratic anti-monarchy people around.

What this says to me as that anyone intelligent that takes such pronouncements seriously as even worth arguing over is a willing participant in the death of all serious arts scholarship.

Right now I'm off to see 'The Apple Tree', during which I plan to be an unwitting participant in Original Sin, because I think Eve is in it.

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Thank you for posting the link, Mashinka. I would agree in theory that racism in old works is a legitimate topic for discussion - don't sweep it under the rug or take it for granted that people will understand where the problem lies, because believe me, not everyone will -- but to suggest that we doctor the works in question in order to tidy them up, as the good professor seems to do, is clearly not the way to go. (I think of what happened, over the decades, to the lyrics of 'Ol' Man River' until it was eventually decided the original words weren't too toxic to be sung.)

He said directors will "do as they like" with interpreting Shakespeare, but that there is too much respect for a composer's original opera vision.

Gosh, don't you hate those guys with respect for the composer's original vision? :)

Please tell us about 'The Apple Tree,' papeetepatrick.

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I found this in today’s Daily Telegraph, an attack on the much-loved opera Madame Butterfly.
.....yesterday's attack, from a renowned opera scholar intending to cause mischief, stirred the soul of opera fans across the country.

Professor Roger Parker, a teacher of music at King's College London and a Puccini specialist, suggested that opera audiences could be unwitting participants in racism because of the stereotypes Madama Butterfly contains.

Oddly, Parker doesn’t pick up on the feminist issues involved in the opera.

Read the Complete article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...14/nopera14.xml

Seen through the eyes of modern day audiences the opera certainly is racist, just as Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is anti Semitic, his Taming of the Shrew misogynistic and Henry V the glorification of a war criminal. It’s misleading of Prof. Parker to make comparisons with modern day Shakespearean productions because whatever ideas they have about staging, directors leave the text alone along with the odious sentiments contained within that text.

Geez, it boggles the mind. Madama Butterfly is racist? Gasp.

Il expert professore di Puccini hasn't even seen the production, he's just guessing from his ivory tower that it "might" have racist elements. This boggles the mind that he has credentials. Let's hope the article was slanted is some way so he is not really as naive as he sounds.

The opera is based on a turn of the (20th)C tearjerker play by David Belasco. This makes Puccini's opera PC!

Belasco's Butterfly speaks only in Pigeon and has very little of the steel and dignity that Puccini gives his heroine.

But as Dirac and other's have pointed out, you either throw the thing out completely or leave it alone. If you take out the racist elements and Butterfly's accompaning naivete, ther is very little story left.

The good professor makes some of the Konzept directors like Beito sound responsible!

Interesting the Long story was based on real life but somehow the ugly Brit got turned into an ugly American.

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I was surprized not to see any mention of David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly in the article. Hwang addresses the question of Western racial and erotic fantasies about Japan in part by riffing on Madame Butterly.

This article is not a particularly good example of the kind of work scholars can do with these questions. But I also feel it is totally legitimate to explore the belief systems (good and bad) that inform works of art from other eras. Actually, I think it's an important thing to do precisely because these works are part of our inheritance as art lovers etc. (I also believe that sometimes people are too quick to assume that "everyone" thought a certain way in past eras. Not everyone in the early-twentieth century, when Puccini's opera premiered, thought the same way about colonialism or race...though certainly certain ideas were prevalent.)

Anyway, even though Puccini drew on ideas and images that were prevalent, I don't think that means we should not bother thinking about the place of those ideas in his work. Since racist ideas justified directly and indirectly some pretty ugly events--and continue to do so--perhaps we should have some heightened self-consciousness about their presence in works we otherwise admire. One doesn't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but why not acknowledge that the bathwater smells a bit...The fact that Pinkerton raises one's ire doesn't entirely change things: stories of native nobility and innocence have always been part of colonial fantasy.

Does that mean one can't continue to enjoy Madame Butterfly or, say, the Blackamoor in Petrouchka? of course, that's not something that can be dictated to people one way or another. But I do think we may learn to see these works differently and that's not a bad thing. So I'm all in favor of having some discussion of these questions.

I also wonder whether for some works of the past, a director could offer a production that indirectly reflects on the question of stereotypes without cleaning thee works up or distorting them...Perhaps some of the people posting here have seen productions of this kind? Although I doubt Puccini is a good candidate for this sort of treatment, other artists might be...

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This article is not a particularly good example of the kind of work scholars can do with these questions. But I also feel it is totally legitimate to explore the belief systems (good and bad) that inform works of art from other eras. Actually, I think it's an important thing to do precisely because these works are part of our inheritance as art lovers etc. (I also believe that sometimes people are too quick to assume that "everyone" thought a certain way in past eras. Not everyone in the early-twentieth century, when Puccini's opera premiered, thought the same way about colonialism or race...though certainly certain ideas were prevalent.)

Anyway, even though Puccini drew on ideas and images that were prevalent, I don't think that means we should not bother thinking about the place of those ideas in his work. Since racist ideas justified directly and indirectly some pretty ugly events--and continue to do so--perhaps we should have some heightened self-consciousness about their presence in works we otherwise admire. One doesn't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but why not acknowledge that the bathwater smells a bit...The fact that Pinkerton raises one's ire doesn't entirely change things: stories of native nobility and innocence have always been part of colonial fantasy.

Does that mean one can't continue to enjoy Madame Butterfly or, say, the Blackamoor in Petrouchka? of course, that's not something that can be dictated to people one way or another. But I do think we may learn to see these works differently and that's not a bad thing. So I'm all in favor of having some discussion of these questions.

Just so. (And your point about the noble native as the stuff of colonial fantasy is well taken.)

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I was surprized not to see any mention of David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly in the article. Hwang addresses the question of Western racial and erotic fantasies about Japan in part by riffing on Madame Butterly.

Indeed. Since the topic was addressed in more or less popular culture almost 20 years ago, it's odd to see a scholar bring it up now. When I came across Parker's "attack" on the Internet today, I was struck by a profound sense of "been there, done that." Post-colonial criticism has been around for decades. Surely opera fans have been filtering their appreciation of certain operas through its lens for many years now.

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I also wonder whether for some works of the past, a director could offer a production that indirectly reflects on the question of stereotypes without cleaning thee works up or distorting them...Perhaps some of the people posting here have seen productions of this kind? Although I doubt Puccini is a good candidate for this sort of treatment, other artists might be...

I don't believe this is possible or even desirable. You can do this only be making what is essentially a new work. A 2007 critique inserted into a monumentally important work from the past might be okay for a kind of performance art thing. Could possibly resemble what was done in last year's film about how you couldn't make a film of 'Tristram Shandy', that movie called just 'Cock and Bull Story', I believe, which I found to be worth very little. Even a failed attempt to make an impossible film of a difficult novel (and 'Tristram Shandy' was for me much more difficult than 'Ulysses' , 'Recherches', or any of the most difficult Faulkner), would have actually proved that it couldn't be done. It's not even been quite a year since I saw 'Cock and Bull Story, and I can remember scarcely a single image from it.

That's purely coincidental about that film, what I'll say now. At least with film, if you don't like what stereotypes were being expressed which did derive from the times (even if only that the times would allow you to put them into forms that would not be tolerated today in those very forms), the films can't be tampered with and made into 'new productions.' 'Gone With the Wind' cannot be changed to suit people who don't like it. You can write 'the Wind Done Gone' and swear that it obliterates 'GWTW', and a year later look around and find that nobody still thinks that GWTW had been obliterated.

What is being talked about here that is legitimate is educating oneself on history. There are the history books, the books of political history, the books of film and art history that talk about these matters. There can be discussions about the racism, sexism, or any kind of thing that, God forbid, differs from mores in 2007 that polite people observe. But productions of artworks that hold within them an inner critique of the work may hold interest for some, but they are not going to have any effect on people who want to protect treasures essentially as they were written. Treatises, dissertations, truly scholarly articles about these things are another thing, but most of this sort of thing still reminds me of my friend who objected to 'Blow-up', Antionioni's great film, having seen it well over 30 years after it was made for calling the girls 'chicks' in it, in Hemming's photography studio, as if it should be condemned for reflecting language prevalent in the 60s. Updating operas and ballets is not even usually successful except when it is done so subtly that at least the music, text and choreography (if not new) are preserved, but putting in new material 'without cleaning up and not distorting it' is, I think, a contradiction in terms. If wrong, I'll be glad to hear of how such a mangling-without-mangling was done.

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It's a good subject to write about, but he wants directors to emphasize this in productions? I'm having horrible premonitions of politically correct versions of Butterfly, Turandot, Trovatore, Ballo, Aida, Otello, Entführung, Zauberflöte, Carmen...where will it stop? And we haven't even gotten to the ballets!

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What about the Japanese themselves? How do they respond to Butterfly? Is it as popular there as in the West? Is there a movement to revise or ban it? GHw about the position of Japanese singers and conductors?

And how about China, with its own very complex historical relationship to Japan?

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papeetepatrick writes:

You can do this only be making what is essentially a new work.

Not necessarily, I’d suggest. A contemporary performance of “The Merchant of Venice” may highlight by staging and acting ways in which our own view of Shylock differs from Shakespeare’s. It’s not exactly what Shakespeare intended – there’s no way it could be, things have changed too much – but neither is it a completely new work or a dismantling of the play. However, I could imagine ways in which such an approach might be taken too far and result in distortion.

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I am curious what the answer is to Bart's question. (Google turned up articles on "Realtokyo.co" and "Japanreview.net" claiming that Madame Butterfly was initially quite poorly received in Japan for pretty much the reasons we are talking about it here. But I have no way of evaluating these articles.)

I was also curious about what people thought of the current Met production by Minghella. In an interview on NPR he spoke about letting Puccini do his thing, but I still wondered if the use of Bunraku puppets on the Met stage would in fact have a framing effect--drawing attention to how the story itself was invented at a distance from its material. At any rate, I assume it's not a scenic effect Puccini ever had in mind...

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What about the Japanese themselves? How do they respond to Butterfly?

The Telegraph quotes an employee of the Japanese embassy as saying, "I don't think it is racist at all. The story could have happened in Vietnam or even London. It is about the time it was set in, we don't feel offended because it is about Japan."

And the New National Theatre in Tokyo will be presenting the opera next month:

http://www.nntt.jac.go.jp/english/season/s311e/s311e.html

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'"An authentic production [of the opera] is a racist production. It has a lot of ideas within it that would be seen in any other circumstances as racist. It is not just a question of the words, it also Puccini's music."

So, if it's also a question of Puccini's music, how is this 'specialist' going to cut and paste so we won't hear any coarse 'japanese-isms'? Court music to make for noblesse? Japanese rock music to give the 15-year-old 'agency'? Maybe change the ending, she doesn't even commit suicide.

'Prof Parker said his remarks would be regarded as heresy by some people, but that the popularity of "authentic" productions meant he had to speak out.'

Terrible about the popularity of 'authentic' productions (I'm not sure I noticed) as well as the popularity of publicity.

"We have become much more sensitive [about racism] and the interpretation of Madama Butterfly is one of those operas that needs to reflect that."'

We've only become more sensitive about some racisms, not nearly all, and the racism should be there, it's part of it. You don't solve racism problems 'in our current society' by ethnically cleansing-reversal in old artworks where it is an integral part of understanding what the whole piece is about. That it's bad is completely irrelevant. People have often been bad, and they may still do it. Racism existed in the culture, and therefore it existed in the art. I imagine the percentage of audience members not knowing that beforehand is so miniscule as to be all but invisible.

'One doesn't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but why not acknowledge that the bathwater smells a bit...'

Anyone knows that 'the Birth of a Nation' is not only about racism, but it is even racist itself. 'Gone With the Wind' was not Southern-White racist (that's what happened back in the day), it is American-white-racist and Hollywood-white-studio-head racist, both of which sold both it and 'Birth', which were both enormously popular all over the country--and all of this is part of what makes the films what they are. They cannot be understood only as depictions of racism, but as racism-imbedded works themselves, historical documents of their time even when not intended as such. Of course, film is not the issue, but it does have the advantage, as I said before, of not being something you can change the perception of except by commentary and criticism.

You do not need to 'acknowledge that the bathwater smells a bit' within the work, because things stink everywhere anyway (it's not like we've got fewer problems of intolerance now than Puccini's Italy did, we've just tended to some of the ones that stared us in the face first), and nobody can miss it in these obvious examples anyway. To insert these things into classic works is a form of re-writing history, not just art.

Every Greek tragedy would need to somehow insert that our storied and noble Greeks were slaveowners, since we are by now so sensitive to how bad slaveowning is (are we anyway? of course not; only selected, convenient non-slaveowning).

It's hard to see why commentary, proper education in history are not what is needed. Furthermore, that is even already in place. I frankly don't really even know what this professor is talking about.

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The only thing "Japanese" about Madame Butterfly is her kimono. In all other respects, she's another one of Puccini's long-suffering, victimized, thoroughly Italian sopranos. I have to admit though, that much as I enjoy some of Puccini (and I prefer his stronger, more dominant female leads like Tosca and Minnie), Butterfly, like Suor Angelica, is altogether too saccharine for my taste, and I've only seen the opera once - in a non-professional production at that.

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Columbia University has published a NYC Opera Project, which includes a brief discussion of "orientalism" in Madama Butterfly. I wasn't able to get the Link to work, but here's a selection referring to the influence of Japanese music ON Puccini:

Puccini's music embodies the same mixture of reality and fiction. Imaginary musical reconstructions of Japan and quotes from authentic Japanese music coexist in the score. Puccini took great pains to recreate the "realistic" musical atmosphere of Japan. Mrs. Oyama was his main informant in Italy:

She told me so many interesting things, sang me some native songs and promised to send me some music from her country.

He copied and studied melodies from publications that contained transcriptions of Japanese songs. It would seem that he was also able to listen to records shipped from Tokyo. Puccini uses these melodies to underscore what he saw as key aspects of Japanese culture, but also to characterize musically the protagonists of the opera. Thus, the wedding between Pinkerton and Cho-Cho-San is accompanied by the Japanese national anthem Kimi ga yo. According to the scholar Kimiyo Powils-Okano, at least ten authentic melodies can be identified in Puccini's score. But Puccini also invented his own sonic image of Japan. A distinctive feature of this imagined Orient is the use of pentatonic and whole-tone scales, which Western musicians of this period tended to associate with a rather broadly defined and exotic East.

I've also found a website for the Madama Butterfly International Concours in Nagasaki. For the second competition (2006), all applicants were required to perform several arias from the opera, while being allowed to select from a list of other operatic selections.

Nagasaki International Madama Butterfly Concours

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If we change or ignore the artifacts of times gone by, we lose our ability to understand the eras that produced them. I shudder to think what that would lead to.

While I totally agree that altering art in order to appease modern mores is artistically questionable and intellectually dishonest, I do think that the "The Birth of a Nation" comparison is interesting in that "The Birth of a Nation" is widely acknowledged to be racist (as well as a masterpiece, but that's neither here nor there). "The Birth of a Nation" is very rarely shown publicly without a major demonstration (The last one I remember at the Silent Movie Theatre here in Los Angeles resulted in a demonstration that shut down the theatre).

I don't think "Madame Butterfly" is acknowledged as racist so much by the general public so much as in intellectual circles, and as has been commented in this thread is performed very widely. I do think there is a question as to whether it continues to perpetuate the "Butterfly" myth of the beautiful, fragile, submissive (and perhaps stupid) "Oriental" woman willing to die for the love of the big strong, Western imperialist. I think it's worth considering that it was not even 20 years ago that "Miss Saigon" was a hit with exactly the same story (okay, somewhat more sympathetic Western imperialist). And looking at the personal ads in the newspapers, somebody's buying into it judging by the number of ads seeking "Single Asian Female, between the ages of 18-25."

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I have a Japanese friend who was somewhat astonished to find that the libretto was based on a David Belasco play. He said, "We have that story! The names and nationalities are different, but the situation's the same. I always thought that the opera was based on that old tear-jerker."

And it is political correctness of the worst sort to destroy cultural artifacts because they aren't "x" enough. Does this mean that all the Chinese Chippendale has to go to the bonfire?

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Storylines in classical ballet and operas tend to be very cliche... using the same themes again and again. And there is no reason to assume that cultural stereotyping is not incorporated into librettos which look almost cartoon like. I find most of the stories "silly"... but they are frames to hang emotional interactions between humans.. love, jealousy, vengeance, betrayal and so on.. and they play them very big usually.

It's hard not to think without stereotypes... they are handy and have some basis in truth. But they can be dangerous too... Life is more complicated and nuanced. We don't live in cartoon worlds or black and white.

I suppose if everyone accepted that these storyline are what they are... sexist, racist and so on... then we might able to use them as productive and instructive.

But mixing art and politics can be dangerous too. The arts can be a mirror held up to society and if it shows us the ugly underbelly than perhaps it will have a positive effect... but you don't want to be perpetuating some nastiness.

Do you?

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But mixing art and politics can be dangerous too. The arts can be a mirror held up to society and if it shows us the ugly underbelly than perhaps it will have a positive effect... but you don't want to be perpetuating some nastiness.

Do you?

I agree that no one wants to do that, but on the other hand some very draconian forms of censorship have been imposed in the name of not 'perpetuating nastiness' and milder forms of censorship with more benevolent intent are no less undesirable, I think.

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