Asian Voices in English

David Henry Hwang and the Revenge of Madame Butterfly

DAVID HENRY HWANG AND THE REVENGE OF MADAME BUTTERFLY Douglas Kerr One of the best-known of all Asian voices sings in Italian. I dare say that Madame Butterfly is the most recognisable image in all of Western opera, and one that comes freighted with meaning even for those who have never seen or heard the opera, and have the vaguest idea of the story. One such was the American playwright David Henry Hwang, who, one afternoon in 1986 while driving down Santa Monica Boulevard, was visited by 'the idea of doing a deconstructivist Madame Butterfly', even though at the time he did not even know the plot of the opera.1 This paper is interested in what led to that idea, and what resulted from it: that is, the production and development of the image of Madame Butterfly from its origins almost a century ago, to its latest and violent reaccentuation in David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly, given its first performance in 1988. The composer Puccini was in England in the summer of 1900, in connection with the London production of his latest opera Tasca, when he attended a performance of an American play called Madame Butterfly. He was enthralled. He knew very little English, but he knew what he liked, and (says Mosco Carner) 'came away profoundly moved by the play, in spite of or perhaps because of his inability to follow its dialogue'.2 When Puccini first heard Butterfly's voice, it was speaking in a language he did not know, yet felt he understood. The character of Madame Butterfly had made her debut in a novelette by John Luther Long which was published in the American Century Magazine in 1898. This in turn owes something to Pierre Loti's novel Madame Chrysantheme (1887), an orientalist whimsy that tells the story of a European sailor's temporary marriage to a Japanese geisha. (Loti specialised in this sort of thing: E.M. Forster described him as 'a sentimentalist who has voyaged hat in hand over the picturesque world', adding 'Les mariages de Loti se font partout'.3) But Butterfly seems to have had her chief origin too in a piece of gossip which Long (who had never been to Japan) 1. David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 95. 2. Mosco Carner, Puccini: A Critical Biography, 2nd edn. (London: Duckworth, 1974), p. 127. 3. E.M. Forster, Abinger Harvest (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 286. DOUGLAS KERR had heard from his sister, the wife of an American missionary at NagasakL4 The dramatic or melodramatic potential of the tale, when he read it in the Century Magazine, caught the attention of David Belasco, then at the height of his fame as a playwright and theatrical producer. The collaboration between Belasco and Long - Arthur Hobson Quinn describes it rather sadly as 'the most artistic period' of Belasco's careerS - brought forth the one-act play Madame Butterfly, first produced in New York in 1900, which was to be followed by five other exotic romances, including The Girl of the Golden West (1905). Puccini first saw and heard Butterfly, then, in the London production of Belasco's dramatisation of Long's story. The play retains a great deal of the dialogue of the original story, but Belasco's dramatic instinct led him to a concentration of the action into a single act ..... -more accurately, an act of two scenes, separated by the overnight vigil of Butterfly, a feature which Puccini was to retain. Belasco's other major change was to the plot. In Long's story, Butterfly's attempt at suicide is unsuccessful: she decides to live after all, and (it is implied) she returns in the end to her former profession of geisha. Belasco could see that this would not do. The action of the play starts some three years after Lt Pinkerton has sailed away from Nagasaki, leaving behind Cho-Cho-San the geisha (known as Butterfly ) with whom he has gone through a form of marriage, and promising to return when the robins nest again. Even her servant Suzuki can see the cynicism of this promise: but Cho-Cho-San believes Pinkerton will keep faith. She turns down an offer of marriage from the wealthy Yamadori, even though Sharpless, the American consul, tries to make her understand that it is useless to pin her hopes on PiRkerton. A ship's gun is heard: Pinkerton's ship has arrived in the harbour; Butterfly, her...