Pittsburgh in the Round: Pittsburgh Opera launched its 80th season last night in truly grand style, with probably the best staged and sung performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly seen and heard in decades of “Butterflies,” and a large and exceptionally enthusiastic audience unleashed a thunderous ovation when the too short evening came to a close.
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My first project in basic design this year was on the Pittsburgh Opera and I learned that Madama Butterfly is one of the shows that throughout the company’s 80 years that have produced the most. From what the article says about this production of it, it sounds like this a uniquely wonderful production of the show that has been produced so many times. The article even says that this is “probably the best staged and sung performance” of this opera in decades, so that is very high praise. I think it is great that the show has a mix of veterans to the Pittsburgh Opera stage as well as brand new people, in fact, Dina Kuznetsova in the title role is brand new and everything said about her says she is amazing. I love that this review includes pictures of the production because they mention that the set is beautiful and colorful and the pictures really show that. I especially like the way the clouds are pained, the set really shows how beautiful a place it is where the opera takes place.
This article discussed the new rendition of Madame Butterfly the opera, which is one that was being conversed in my history class. Through the article, he talked about how refreshing this version of the opera was. As the story line is a tragedy and often perceived as a hard storyline t process, the reviews about it being shown in a new light caught my eye. The talent of the vocalists in this opera are spoken upon with a positive manner in this article. The melody and tone of voice helped distract the audience from the sad storyline and made the opera itself more enjoyable overall. With specifical symbolic gestures in which the direct hand picked, helped evoke emotions within the audience and the vocalists. With marriage of the instrumentalists and the singers, the timing of the story allowed there to be room for the audience to breathe and digest the story instead of a more past pace story.
Hello friends. I was invited by the much beloved DB to leave a comment regarding this article. I have been quite hesitant as the last time I talked about yellowface performance and yellow stereotypes I wrote like 50 pages. I will try to be as succinct as I can.
Productions like Madame Butterfly (stereotypical Asian parts played by non-Asian performers), no matter how refreshing, grand, marvelous they are, contribute to the perpetuation of yellowface and yellow stereotypes that have resulted in minimal and derogatory Asian representation for decades.
For this particular production, the Asian female lead, Cio-cio-san is played by a white singer. I see only one Asian face in all of the production photos. In short, the problem with yellowface, meaning non-Asian (in most cases, white) performers using make-up techniques to look more Asian, is that not only it limits the opportunities for performers of actual Asian descent to be cast in Asian roles, but it also reduces Asian identity to faceless objects: artifacts, make-up, costumes, etc.
On top of using yellowface, Madama Butterfly protrays Cio-Cio-San as a docile and self-sacrificial woman who in the end dies for her unworthy white lover. The success of the opera since the beginning of 20th century has popularized the white-man fantasy of Asian females' submission and delicacy.
The struggles for Asian-American performers have been complicated and multi-layered: roles written to be Asian are played by white performers in yellowface make-up; roles that are specifically Asian immigrants or people in Asian countries are stereotypical; roles for ordinary everyday Americans where race isn’t an essential part of the story are rarely cast with Asian-American performers. And yes, opera is a slightly different world. Many believe that a performer (singer)'s vocal range, type, strength etc. should come before everything else. And also yes, the story of Madama Butterfly is a beautifully tragic one. But maybe we can start being mindful of the repercussions of producing (& enjoying) shows of the like over and over, with a mostly white cast : )
Well said, JinAh. I am speaking from a place of no authority whatsoever. I am very white (hailing from the Netherlands and Poland), so I can never fully understand what it means to be a person of color in the U.S. I think we as theatre makers have always kind of acknowledged that Madame Butterfly is problematic, but the most whiplash it seems to get is a general shrug and a "well, it is really that bad?". We need to be better than this. We need to show that we are, and the first, and rather simple step is to cast Asian actors in parts that are specifically written to be Asian roles. And this rebels against the notion of color neutral casting, but why when a person of color is passed up for a role it always seems to be taken by a white performer? I know I can't do much except offer my support to any kind of positive change, and listening to my knowledgeable peer and friend about this issue :)
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