Independent Arts News Reporting 
Pictured Above: Puppet Artist, Hua Hua Zhang. Photo Credit: Contributed.
Reimagining Madame Butterfly
By: Lori Goldstein
Performances of Opera Philadelphia’s Madame Butterfly are on stage at the Academy of Music, running April 26 and April 28, May 3 and May 5.
There is much discussion in the opera world about not only cultural appropriation in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, including the quotation of Asian music—both Chinese and Japanese melodies he once heard in a music box–but also the blatant Orientalism the work perpetuates. Recent productions have attempted to remedy the latter by casting Asian singers, but those roles are often the only ones available to them. How to address the former, without changing the music and libretto, is a conundrum that Japanese production designer Yuki Izumihara and director Ethan Heard have decided to tackle in their Opera Philadelphia production.
Discomfort with Cio Cio San’s submissiveness was keenly felt by Yuki the first time she saw Madame Butterfly, and it was why the opera left her feeling “unrooted.” She presumed that other Asian Americans have reacted similarly to this pigeonholing of their identity:
Pictured Above: Production Designer, Yuki Izumihara. Photo Credit: Contributed.
“Puccini trapped Butterfly in a beautiful score. In turn, Butterfly has become a trap: AAPI [Asian American Pacific Islander] artists are asked to lend it authenticity and life in new productions that promise much but change little. To liberate ourselves from Puccini’s beautiful trap I propose accepting Cio Cio San as the puppet he created and rendering her as such onstage. Through this form, our production becomes a cautionary tale, examining how ongoing misrepresentation in content and character portrayal affects us all and takes over, unless and until we put our emphasis on the future—positivity and empowerment.”
The concept of Cio Cio San as a puppet derives from the Japanese veneration for dolls and the farewell ritual enacted when the owner is emotionally ready to give them up. In her program note, Yuki writes: “Dolls are not thrown away in Japan. There is a ceremony to give them a proper good-bye. It’s an appreciation of the doll—for sharing its time. It’s a celebration of us—as we come to outgrow it.”
It’s easy to see the doll as a metaphor for 15-year-old Cio Cio San, a stereotypical geisha who wants to fulfill her husband’s fantasy. Indeed, Pinkerton, the Navy lieutenant who purchases her to be his wife, literally refers to her as such. “What is so smart about Yuki’s concept is that it really is born out of the text. Pinkerton objectifies Cio Cio San, calls her a doll, calls her a toy…He really does fetishize her,” says Ethan.
Thus the role of Cio Cio San is embodied in a puppet created and performed by Hua Hua Zhang. She is a Philadelphia-based Chinese puppet artist who toured nationally and internationally as a performer in the China Puppet Arts Troupe of Beijing before she moved to America. In this country she has the freedom to be both the performer–the actor moving with the puppet–and the designer of the puppet.
“Any puppet that I make, I [must] have a strong feeling about it,” says Hua Hua, who was naturally familiar with the opera. Perhaps because she is not Japanese, Hua Hua did not have the same strong reaction to Puccini’s portrayal of Cio Cio San as did Yuki. However, her Asian friends say they are eager to see a new version of the tragic heroine.
When Opera Philadelphia asked her to design the puppet, Hua Hua did not hesitate “because my passion is there, I listen to the music and my heart is aching.” She was also excited that this was going to be a stylized opera, with multiple non-realistic elements. Yuki asked her to portray the iconic tragic Oriental heroine.
Listening to Puccini’s music guided the choices she made in the colors, fabrics, and facial features of the doll puppet. Hua Hua sculpted a mask as pure as porcelain to convey Cio Cio San’s delicate, yet fragile beauty. For the kimono she chose detailed silk material.
Pictured Above: Hua Hua Zhang. Photo Credit: Contributed.
With Yuki’s concept of Cio Cio San as a puppet, a new character emerges—the Spirit of Cio Cio San—sung by soprano Karen Chia-Ling Ho, who wears an obi similar to the puppet’s as a visual cue. “We are writing a new layer to the story…how I think about it is that Karen has a 2024 feminist consciousness,” says Ethan. “She is also resonating and vibrating in the story now. To me, the puppet is trapped in the stereotype, while Karen starts to lift out of it…she is our eyes and ears onstage, and just her presence helps us watch it with more perspective. It doesn’t let us off the hook.”
“So is she looking at herself, looking at the doll, she’s seeing what she’s becoming, perhaps what she does not want to become,” I say.
“Exactly. That is definitely the hope,” he says.
In the weeks before the first performance on April 26 at the Academy of Music, early rehearsals are essentially workshops, in which the cast practice traditional movements, including how to bow, walk, handle fans, and pour tea, as taught to them by two Japanese movement consultants. It is Hua Hua and Ethan who determine how the singers are to move in relation to the puppet.
Sometimes Hua Hua manipulates her “living sculpture” to interact with the singers; sometimes Karen, the Spirit, handles the puppet. At the end of Act 1, when Cio Cio San and Pinkerton are alone after the wedding, Anthony Ciaramitaro, in the role of Pinkerton, sings not to Karen, but to Cio Cio San the puppet, even holding her and caressing her hands. Pinkerton never interacts with Karen; he does not look at Karen but he feels her presence. She is invisible to him and the rest of the cast. In rehearsal, Ethan jokingly tells Karen she has a Harry Potter-style “invisibility cloak.”
The choreography for the puppet is as fluid as that of a ballet dancer. “Hua Hua’s puppetry does allow for a kind of expressivity that opera singers can’t pull off when they’re singing,” Ethan points out. There’s a lot of physicality in it. “The puppet can dart around the stage and tremble and fly. We have her kneeling at the table or lying down. It’s a nice juxtaposition to the music because Puccini’s love duet in particular is always soaring.”
“It’s a joyful, messy, experimental process because we’re trying to marry opera technique and traditional opera staging with…puppet design and puppet choreography…what it brings to the surface are these questions about the stereotype of the submissive Asian woman,” says Ethan. “It gives us a chance to stage that in a new way, where the audience on the one hand still experiences the beauty of the story, the beauty of the music, but might also feel a little uncomfortable with it,” says Ethan. There has to be a sense of trepidation, he believes, when Pinkerton utters these disturbing lyrics: “I will hold you, I’m going to pin you down [like a butterfly], even if your wings break, you are mine.”
According to Yuki’s PowerPoint presentation of the production’s visual components, “the projection design will illustrate the psychological narrative—how unhealthy representation impacts living persons. The set consists of a full-stage cyc, [cyclorama, a rear projection screen] one full stage blackout curtain, and three black fabric curtains on a track…This set is not a location that can be anchored to an actual place. It is the unsureness of a teenage girl’s experience coming of age without a healthy icon.” The only furniture onstage are tables and chairs, “so that it’s clear we’re not what people expect from Madame Butterfly,” says Yuki.
While the set is abstract, the projection screen will show readily recognizable images, including the face of the teenage girl, a butterfly, a cherry blossom tree, as well as Karen, the soprano. “The projection screen is a portal to the dialogue we seek,” writes Yuki. “In the year 2024, should Madame Butterfly continue to be the canonical artwork representing Japanese culture in the field of opera?”
Yuki takes issue even with Puccini’s portrayal of a geisha. When Cio Cio San learns of Pinkerton’s marriage to an American woman, the prospect of returning to her occupation fills her with shame. This doesn’t make sense when you consider the fact that geisha are young women who have trained for years in the performing arts of dance, music, and singing.
As to Cio Cio San’s idea of honor, “I did wonder multiple times actually, what did the honor mean to her, she couldn’t live honorably because she got cheated?” asks Yuki. “Yes, it’s hard to be cheated on, you do feel shameful, but at the same time, that’s not dishonor…Dishonor means you did something wrong, you can’t live a life honorably. Still to this day, I have difficulty understanding what her feeling of dishonor came from.” Yuki also points out that hara-kiri (death by suicide) was a way for samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies. No one is threatening to take Cio Cio San’s life but herself.
Another important visual element in the production is the Interlude, which Yuki and Ethan have inserted between Acts 2 and 3. At this point in the opera, in traditional productions, Cio Cio San is seen gazing at the shore, waiting for Pinkerton’s return. During this time, the audience will also see a video that shows past productions of the opera as well as the history of Japanese activists and thinkers. “The biggest part of Ethan’s artistry is ‘artivism,’ where he’s actually mashing the art and activism together,” says Yuki. (This is not their first collaboration: they worked jointly on the short film Quando by Heartbeat Opera, of which Ethan is co-founder.) She also points out that by the 1890s (Madame Butterfly premiered in 1904), there were “pretty vocal [Japanese] feminists.”
One video (accessible on Youtube) that is a reference for the Interlude is entitled “Beyond Orientalism,” created by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition in 2016. It shows damaging caricatures of Asians in print media, as well as the costumes and makeup used to make white actors look like East and Southeast Asians. Yuki and Ethan’s Interlude will project images of Japanese and Asian American icons whose stories “we should be telling,” says Yuki.
In 2016, when Opera Philadelphia staged Turandot, the company initiated a dialogue with local Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community members. “Inspired by those conversations,” writes General Director and President, David Devan, “we committed to creating more rewarding opportunities for AAPI artists throughout our artistic practice.” That dialogue has continued to inform the production of Madame Butterfly with the establishment of a Community Advisory Council that met with the company’s creative team. The cast for this opera includes six Asian and Asian American singers.
What Yuki learned from the Council is that there are a lot of Asian and Asian American people who love this opera because “it’s relatable, she looks like us. They wanted [us] to do Madame Butterfly.” What Yuki is looking to initiate is a dialogue with the audience. Her hope is that the younger generation will question why this opera is still being performed. “By placing the 2024 human being actually onstage, not letting people off the hook, as Ethan is saying, of actually thinking about it, that active thinking is what becomes forward-looking.” Perhaps this dialogue will also inspire young Asian and Asian American artists to create new works that present truer images of their experience.
“The Council has been a great sounding board,” says Ethan. “They are a reminder that there’s a diverse array of opinions and feelings about this opera. I think that’s the joy of it, that there are people who will have a lot of different experiences watching it. Some people want to get swept away by the music, some people are more aware of the politics and social commentary, and you know, Yuki and I are throwing in some unexpected surprises, so it’ll be interesting to see how the audience reacts.”
Performances of Opera Philadelphia’s Madame Butterfly are on stage at the Academy of Music, running April 26 and April 28, May 3 and May 5. Tickets are available at tix.operaphila.org.
