It's been five years, believe it or not, since Knoxville Opera last staged Puccini's Madama Butterfly. This production promises to be a bit different, concentrating on the aspects of Japanese culture that condemns a young girl's choice to marry an American naval officer.
Giacomo Puccini based his opera on a story by a Philadelphia lawyer, John Luther Long, and the play taken from that story by American producer/playwright David Belasco. Long claimed to have heard the story from his sister, the wife of a missionary based in Nagasaki. Oddly, though, the story is incredibly similar to one in a novel by Pierre Loti published in France in 1887: Madame Chrysanthème. Although the main character of the novel is a young naval officer, Pierre, told in the first-person, the novel has many similarities--the use of a marriage broker, his callous relationship with Chrysanthème, and his departure from Nagasaki. However in the novel, they part on good terms, the girl holding the silver dollars given to her in fulfillment of their marriage.
It has been said that Puccini witnessed a 1900 London production of Belasco's play and was impressed by Belasco's tragic ending. Apparently, he also loved some of Belasco's stagecraft effects, a 14-minute span where Butterfly silently waits for Pinkerton to arrive in which time passing was created through lighting effects. Puccini used the end of his Act II and the beginning of Act III to duplicate the idea of time passing.
Singing the role of Cio-Cio-San (Madame Butterfly) will be soprano Jin-Won Park. Joel Burcham will sing Pinkerton and Mark Womack will sing Sharpless. Madama Butterfly runs Friday evening at 8:00 and Sunday afternoon at 2:30 in the Tennessee Theatre in Downtown Knoxville. Information here and the Calendar entry here.
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