Bye Bye, Butterfly

When it comes to political correctness, opera often gets cut a lot of slack. Characters, or even entire operas, can range from the mild caricature to the racist, the sexist, or even a fun combination of the two! It’s this latter theme that I would like to discuss in this blog post. Despite being confronted with an array of offensive operas to choose from, the one that I keep coming back to when thinking about issues of racism and misogyny in opera is that stalwart of the Western canon, Madama Butterfly.

Originally conceived in 1903 as an Orientalist fantasy depicting a fated encounter between East and West, recent productions of Madama Butterfly make it clear that, in terms of our handling of the opera’s themes, we have not moved on. Countless productions are advertised using stereotyped images of geishas in a fetishized Japan; in performance, these geishas are often white women in heavy make-up and culturally insensitive costumes. After having seen the Welsh National Opera’s recycling of Joachim Herz’s production of the opera in 2017 (a production that was, by this point, over 30 years old), I left the theatre wondering why opera is still allowed to get away with what is essentially blatant cultural appropriation. While the white-washing of characters in film and TV has hardly been eliminated, here the decision to cast white people in Asian roles is frequently at least questioned; take, for example, the uproar surrounding Scarlett Johansson’s casting in the remake of The Ghost in the Shell. In the opera house, however, if you want white-women-as-geishas, no problem! They can shamelessly be at the forefront of the production, flaunting a sheer disregard for political correctness; after all, why does a bit of ‘light entertainment’ have to concern itself with issues of common decency?

An advertising image used by the Royal Opera House for their 2014 production of Madama Butterfly (image credit to the Royal Opera House, 2014).

The problem with Madama Butterfly does not, however, stop here. The eponymous character, or, to use her actual name, Cio-Cio-san, essentially acts as the focal point of all the problematic features that this opera has to offer. Again, we are often given a white woman in a geisha costume; while, in recent years, Cio-Cio-san has been portrayed by sopranos such as Karah Son (Glyndebourne, 2016), productions at the Royal Opera House, or the WNO performance that has so haunted me, have repeatedly cast white women in the title role. While one could argue that, when Madama Butterfly was written, the role would likely have been performed by a white woman, and thus current performance practice is not that problematic, surely we now know better than this? As I’ve said before, many other art forms would not be allowed to get away with this unchallenged; perhaps, instead of choosing to remain a notoriously conservative and traditional art form, we should be questioning whether these casting decisions are really acceptable anymore, and striving for change.

When it comes to Butterfly, however, there is unfortunately more at stake here than issues of white-washing and cultural appropriation. The plot is a pretty clear realisation of a Western male’s fantasy about Eastern women: poor Cio-Cio-san, deceived by the American Lieutenant Pinkerton, falls pregnant, eventually being forced to hand over her son to a ‘better life’ in the US; she finishes off the Orientalist fantasy by committing suicide with a samurai knife. In the productions that I’m familiar with, it seems that the general consensus is as follows: if Pinkerton is portrayed as suitably evil and heartless, Cio-Cio-san can remain much as she likely was in the early twentieth century. As a character, she is fragile, submissive and obedient; overall, there is little opportunity to portray her as in possession of anything that remotely resembles power or personal autonomy.

 In the character of Cio-Cio-san, then, we are presented with someone who fits perfectly into a long line of male fantasies of the submissive Asian woman; these stereotyped portrayals remain powerful today (see this 2017 Guardian article for more details) and, disturbingly, are rarely questioned. Even if one wishes to remain devoted to the libretto, arguing that Cio-Cio-san is only a fifteen-year-old girl, and thus likely is reasonably fragile, the Cio-Cio-san that we see is never fifteen. Instead, this weak, passive character is presented to us in the form of an adult woman, thus reinforcing these stereotypes that persist in contemporary portrayals of Asian women. This is the element of Madama Butterfly that seems to pass under the political correctness radar the most inconspicuously; if we are content with the idea that Pinkerton is a user and abuser, then we will happily shed a tear for poor innocent Butterfly when she comes to the end of her tragic, Orientalism-tinged life. Yet again, I ask why these frankly racist presentations are still acceptable? Granted, in this case, opera is not the only art form where these stereotypes remain prevalent, but that doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t need to be dealt with.

For me, however, when it comes to solving the problems of Madama Butterfly, I’m not convinced that there’s a lot that can be done. Although opera directors could (and should!) cast Asian singers in Asian roles, when it comes to Cio-Cio-san, there seems to be little that can be done to salvage her character. The entire narrative is filled with issues, and in order for Cio-Cio-san to be portrayed as a more autonomous, powerful character, very substantial changes would have to be made. Indeed, perhaps part of the reason for the frequent appearance of white Butterflies is the sheer offensiveness of the role, in terms of its presentation of Asian women. In my opinion, then, this raises the question as to whether such an extensive re-imagining of this opera is even worth it. Upon leaving the theatre post-Madama Butterfly in 2017, I asked myself whether this opera should just be confined to the annals of history, and, in writing this post, I am thinking about much the same thing. Sure, we can study Madama Butterfly as an example of the pervasiveness of racism and misogyny in opera, or in art more generally, but when opera houses are looking for their next money-spinner, perhaps they should just let Butterfly go.

(The credit for the title of this post has to go to Pauline Oliveros, and her composition that implicitly criticises the 19th-century operatic traditions of racism and misogyny.)