OPERA The Italian Opera Company of Chicago

Madama Butterfly is one of those operas that has grown on me over the years to the point where I am inclined to agree with Puccini when he said, "it's... the best I've written." That Puccini made this statement in the wake of one of the great fiascoes of opera history indicates not simply an example of defiant bravado in the face of withering criticism, but also the composer's steadfast belief that he had accomplished all he had set out to do with this piece. In it he also perfected the personal style he established and developed in La Bohème and Tosca. After making some essentially cosmetic structural adjustments, Puccini was vindicated by the universal acclaim that followed the production of the revised version only a few months after the disastrous premiere. Nor has time eroded the popularity of Madama Butterfly, which stands today as one of the world's most beloved and most often-performed operas.

The enduring appeal of this work cannot be explained merely by its musical excellence. Like Verdi's Aida, which exploits the Western fascination with ancient Egypt, Madama Butterfly intrigues its audiences by its depiction of Japan and Japanese society, which most Westerners still find mysterious and enigmatic. Before we examine some of the musical elements in Madama Butterfly that mark the culmination of Puccini's stylistic development, let us consider briefly the meaning of the work as a representation of Japanese culture, and how a clash of cultures results in a dramatic situation that Puccini was perceptive enough to express so masterfully through the medium of Italian opera.

By unlocking the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone ultimately led more or less directly to the composition of Aida. Likewise another historical incident far removed from the Italian lyric theater, the so-called opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853, set in motion a chain of events that brought about the creation of Madama Butterfly. For almost three centuries, Japan, under the Tokugawa shogunate, existed in almost total seclusion from the rest of the civilized world. But the forces of history, especially the development of Western technology and the explosive growth of world trade, would simply not allow a nation as culturally advanced as Japan to remain in its self-imposed isolation indefinitely. In a remarkably short period of time, Japan has become transformed from a self-sustained agricultural country to one of the world's leading industrial powers and a major player in global commerce. Yet with all the foreign influences that Japan has absorbed, it still retains a unique cultural identity (some would say a "closed society") that we Westerners find hard to understand or to explain. Certainly this aura of mystery and our inability to comprehend Japanese culture in purely Western terms are significant factors in our appreciation of Madama Butterfly.

We often read that Madama Butterfly is "offensive" to the Japanese, although I cannot recall such a characterization being voiced by a Japanese critic. Indeed, one might reasonably expect that Americans would be most likely to be offended by the opera, depicting, as it does, the unconscionable behavior and moral cowardice of the archetypal "ugly American." Puccini surely did not intend any offense to anyone, especially the Japanese. After all, it is Butterfly's profound sense of love, honor and dignity that endow her with the qualities that make her one of opera's most endearing tragic heroines. In any case, the dramatic "truth" of Madama Butterfly arises as much from historical reality as it does from the imagination of the story's authors.

In the centuries immediately preceding the opening of Japan, the figure of the geisha (lit. "dancing girl") became a celebrated institution in Japanese culture. Reminiscent of the hetaira of ancient Greece, these fabled courtesans served a vital function in a society where contacts between men and women were highly restrictive. All marriages were arranged at this time and there were no balls or other social occasions, so common to the Occident, whereby Japanese men and women could freely meet and begin a process of courtship. Thus the geisha phenomenon allowed for the expression of artistic talent by women and the opportunity for men to relate to them in a manner unthinkable within the context of Japanese domestic life. It is not hard to see how this particular phenomenon would be a source of fascination to westerners of the nineteenth century.

There is, of course, another Japanese tradition that became immortalized in Madama Butterfly, namely the practice of seppuku, or ritualized suicide, that was recognized as a respectable means of atoning for a crime or redeeming one's honor. In addition to these easily romanticized societal characteristics, Madama Butterfly offers a western audience a perhaps idealized, but nevertheless credible, sketch of Japanese religion, art, poetry, architecture and the rigid division of the various social classes, which interact in an atmosphere of extreme formality. In short, Madama Butterfly is the most significant Western work of art based upon a Japanese subject, and it is treated with the greatest objectivity possible, given that it comes from a foreign perspective.

Obviously, Madama Butterfly is much more than a musical travelogue. It is a tragedy in the classic sense, wherein the dramatic conflict derives from the willingness of its heroine to desert her cultural traditions -- her family, her religion, her native way of life -- for her love of a foreigner who loves only the idea of setting up house, Japanese style, with an attractive fifteen-year-old girl while on leave from the American navy. That Butterfly's motives arise from a pure and noble heart only intensifies the tragedy of her character, and provides Puccini with a unique dramatic platform from which he was inspired to compose some of his very finest music.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the score of Madama Butterfly is the use of a number of Japanese melodies that serve as some of the opera's most important thematic material. For a composer like Puccini, this is a vital factor, because his personal approach to composition required the extended use of short melodic themes that he would develop and redevelop, quote and juxtapose over and over throughout the course of his operas, often without regard to their dramatic relevance, but always in such a manner that the listener cannot help but perceive a musically unified totality. This "mosaic" technique is obviously employed in La Bohème and Tosca, but achieves its highest state of maturity in Madama Butterfly. In the first fifteen minutes, almost all the important thematic materials are introduced, and these, in one way or another, will become the melodic and harmonic foundations of all the major arias and ensembles (including the opening bars of the "Star Spangled Banner" as well as the Japanese melodies, which Puccini obtained from a variety of Japanese sources). But we must not forget that Puccini was first and foremost an Italian composer. Underlying his personal style of composition is the centuries-old Bel Canto tradition, which subordinates thematic unity, harmony and rhythmical patterns to the demands and capabilities of the human voice as an instrument designed for legato phrasing or cantabile.

Another concept that Puccini perfected in Madama Butterfly was his idea of a complete act as a single unit, an idea that Verdi espoused philosophically, but one that he never completely put into practice. Puccini structured each of the opera's three acts (officially, the first act and two parts of the second) so that the musical landscape of each would be dominated by an unmistakable high point, or climax. He was first successful with this approach in the opening act of La Bohème. In it all the initial arias and ensembles anticipate and directly lead to the act's climactic duet, "O soave fanciulla." Likewise, the first act of Madama Butterfly culminates in the great love duet, "Viene la sera." In fact, we would not be far wrong to describe this entire act as a "prelude and duet." In the second act it is the magnificent "Un bel di" that serves as focal point, musically and dramatically. In the third act all musical roads lead to the ecstatic finale, the melody of which has been anticipated from the beginning of the opera.

Finally, we must comment on Puccini's stylistic eclecticism, which is more apparent in Madama Butterfly than in any of his earlier works. A man whose ear was extraordinarily sensitive to the latest musical trends, Puccini freely uses the Debusseyan whole tone scale and resultant harmonies along with, and often in conjunction with, traditional diatonic melodies and progressions. In addition, we hear much of the pentatonic scale, which is most appropriate since Japanese music is based on this scale. He would use this device again in La fanciulla del West (along with diatonic and whole tone ideas) and again in Turandot (which also reveals the unmistakable influence of the atonal school). But the main purpose of Puccini's music, no matter what the particular immediate influence, was to focus on the passion of his characters and, especially in Madama Butterfly, he succeeds in this regard to a level unmatched by any other composer of Italian opera.