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PROGRAM NOTES
By Colin Graham, Stage Director
Madama Butterfly premiered February 17, 1904 at La Scala in Milan. It was given a rowdy and unkind reception: the audience either jeered or sat in stony silence. Puccini declared it a fiasco and immediately withdrew it, returning his fee. Four months later, Madama Butterfly was performed in a revised version in the Italian city of Brescia, in which the disproportionately long second act was divided in two; additionally, some extraneous material was cut from the wedding scene in the first act. Acts Two and Three were similarly tightened. Many other alterations were made and this time, Puccini's masterpiece was given the reception it deserved. Subsequent productions abroad were equally successful, and it quickly secured a place as one of the pillars of the repertoire. Today, the opera is appreciated in two acts in Italy, while in America the three-act version is more usual.
The version of Madama Butterfly you are seeing today is Puccini's favorite of the three he made and is the one he always used when he conducted it himself. It is called the "Brescia" version. We are guilty of adding back in the tenor aria which did not appear until his last, "Paris" version which became, wrongly, the "standard" version. There are therefore only two acts. What we know as Acts Two and Three are seamlessly joined by the interlude ("The Vigil"), during which the cast never leave the stage. This version also restores material to Kate Pinkerton that was given to Butterfly and Sharpless in Paris. This scene is incredibly moving, as is the last moment between Butterfly and Sharpless when she refuses the money Pinkerton has left for her.
The concept behind this particular production of Madama Butterfly stems from my connection with Kabuki theater, a form of traditional Japanese theater known for the stylization of its drama and the philosophy of achieving the maximum effect with the minimum of means. The set is shaped thus accordingly, and uses the colors they use (the red for instance) and a highly polished natural wooden floor. The "Japanese" members of the cast only wear tabi, which are like a tight sock with a nonslip sole. In Kabuki dance dramas, the actors only wear tabi, hence our convention in the production. The only people who don't wear them are the Americans who ride rough-shod over the shiny surfaces of both floor and Japanese sensibilities.
Kabuki has three or four different acting conventions: the historical drama mode, the dance drama mode, and the sewamono, or domestic mode. This last is the most realistic but still has its movement conventions and stylizations which, of course, the American characters also ignore.
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