Independent Arts News Reporting 
- This event has passed.
Puccini’s Madame Butterfly at Academy of Music
May 3 @ 2:00 pm - 7:00 pm EDT
$29.00
Opera Philadelphia’s 2023-2024 Season closes in spectacular fashion this spring with a new production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly that illuminates and ultimately transcends harmful stereotypes, empowering the protagonist Cio Cio San with new choices for her future.
Madame Butterfly and its title character have fascinated audiences for more than a century. Though hailed for its achingly beautiful score and a story that explores universal themes of love and betrayal, it can also perpetuate problematic Asian stereotypes rooted in Orientalism and exoticism.
The new production designed by Yuki Izumihara and directed by Ethan Heard, both making their Opera Philadelphia debuts, seeks to explore ─ and explode ─ the opera’s core, damaging stereotype of ‘the submissive, self-sacrificing Asian woman.’ Drawing from the text of the opera, in which Cio Cio San is described as an “exotic,” “doll-like” “toy,” the production presents the young geisha as a doll that is purchased, played with, and ultimately abandoned by her husband, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. Read More HERE
