Line #14 YMMV/MadameButterfly


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2	* AdaptationDisplacement: ''Madame Butterfly'' started its existence as a short story by John Luther Long, inspired both by stories his sister had written to him about life in Japan and Pierre Loti's semi-autobiographical novel ''Madame Chrysanthème''. It was then adapted into a play by David Belasco. Both of these were quite successful in their day, but today the opera is one of the most famous examples of the genre and has totally overshadowed its predecessors. The tragic ending of Butterfly committing suicide is more famous, even though it's an invention of Belasco's stage play which also made it into the opera, and Butterfly survives the short story.
3	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
4	** Pretty much any production with have its own take on how sorry Pinkerton really is, particularly his MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment. Sometimes he's genuinely remorseful, others he's [[{{Wangst}} complaining about]] [[ItsAllAboutMe the pain and guilt he and only he feels]], and some have anything in between. A lot of it depends on the translation being used.
5	** Going on from that...when Pinkerton dismisses Sharpless' concerns that Butterfly truly loves him and believes this marriage is the real deal, not the temporary affair it actually is, is it merely because he's an insensitive Jerkass who's too self-centered to comprehend the depth of anyone else's feelings, or because he knows that (in the world of this story at least) these temporary marriages are a common practice among Japanese girls in dire financial straits and that the girls' putting on an act of devotion is all part of the game? After all, in Pierre Loti's ''Madame Chrysanthemum'', the ancestor of the Butterfly story, the French sailor turned back for a moment after he left to find Chrysanthemum merrily counting the coins he'd left her and planning for her next "husband". The original short story by John Luther Long began with Pinkerton's comrade-in-arms warning him against losing his heart to one of these temporary brides, citing his brother who'd killed himself when a geisha he loved broke his heart in what turned out to be a gender-flip of the opera's story. And the Belasco stage play (which basically only covers what would be Acts II and III of the opera) has Pinkerton telling Sharpless that he was in love with Butterfly for several weeks after he sailed, but that he kept himself from going back by reminding himself that her devotion was probably all part of the game and that, like Madame Chrysanthemum, she'd have counted his money and moved on by now. In his letter to Sharpless, he says "and perhaps Butterfly no longer remembers me." Pinkerton may have thought Sharpless was being naive in thinking Butterfly believed in the marriage and wasn't familiar with the kind of act the girls would put on...as one book on opera plots put it, he had no way of knowing he'd ended up with the one geisha who watched every ship that came into the harbor. If one takes this idea into account, it's possible to cut him some slack at least.
6	** Did Butterfly ask for Pinkerton to come to get his son in half an hour simply so she'd have the chance to see him one more time before she killed herself? Or did she do it as a SpitefulSuicide to punish him for dashing all her hopes and ruining her life, letting him be confronted with her bleeding corpse? The ominous leitmotif of death, played by the full orchestra as Pinkerton runs in and sees Butterfly's corpse, suggests the latter: he will be forever traumatized by the sight, knowing he was the reason of it.
7	** Since Kate has only several lines, her character's portrayal largely depends on the production. It ranges from her being perfectly indifferent to Butterfly's suffering and only asking for forgiveness and saying "Poor thing" for the sake of empty politeness – to her completely breaking down and going into hysterics. Her line about Butterfly giving her the child can be interpreted as either "Well, I ''will'' get the child, though, right?" or "Now the poor woman will lose her son as well!". Or something in-between, too. Her counterpart in the short story was the former.
8	** Prince Yamadori has been played as everything from a bumbling idiot and figure of ridicule to a sincere man who seems to have genuine feelings for Butterfly. The 1995 Frederic Mitterand film portrays him as a dignified, rather attractive man of military bearing. The latter interpretation may have more support in the source material...in both the original John Luther Long short story and the David Belasco stage play adaptation (which was what inspired Puccini to create the opera), Yamadori is a Westernized man who has a home in New York City, carries himself with dignity and intelligence, and is willing to take in Butterfly's son and raise him as his own if she marries him. That could be considered a large part of the tragedy...that Butterfly could have been quite happy with Yamadori, had she only seen Pinkerton for what he was and been willing to move on.
9	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
10	** This opera is suffused with sumptuous, powerful music. A great bonus is that Puccini, anxious for authenticity in the music, delved deep into traditional Japanese melodies, peppering them throughout the otherwise very Italian music and many times incorporating them directly into the musical line. It paid off and the result is not only music that "sounds" Eastern, but a lot of music that is genuinely Japanese.
11	** Highlights of the score include Butterfly's breathtakingly ethereal entrance [[https://youtu.be/dRsK2R1zzQk?t=32s "Ancora un passo or via"]], the love duet [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIC__27ycwg "Viene la sera"]], Butterfly's main and most famous aria [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-r2vu4t9-g "Un bel di vedremo"]], and the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f1k14GQmNE "Humming Chorus"]], which is so tender and touching that it inspired another great song - "[[Theatre/LesMiserables Bring Him Home.]]" (The latter is [[HilariousInHindsight rather amusing]] when one considers that Puccini considered adapting Les Miserables at one point as an opera...and that the next project for the creators of Theatre/LesMiserables was [[Theatre/MissSaigon an update of ''Madame Butterfly''!]])
12	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: The otherwise excellent 1995 film adaptation directed by Frederic Mitterand has a couple of these. For some reason, when the Bonze crashes the wedding celebration to denounce Butterfly's conversion to Christianity, he and his attendants are floating in the air. Then, during the Humming Chorus. a beautiful and wistful piece of music which is supposed to depict Butterfly's long night of waiting for Pinkerton who never shows (a moment that impressed Puccini so much in David Belasco's stage play that he decided to adapt it for an opera), we get...grainy film footage of early twentieth-century Japan.
13	* FairForItsDay:
14	** Nowadays, the play gets criticism for codifying the stereotype of Asian women as fragile and nothing without their Western men, but in its time it was meant to ''condemn'' Western imperialism in the East via making Butterfly a victim of Pinkerton's thoughtlessness and {{jerkass}}ery.
15	** There’s also some additional ValuesDissonance to this. Butterfly was also slotted into the Western literary position of the Tragic Female, who is traditionally either helpless (Ophelia) or twisted (Lady Macbeth) as opposed to the Comedic Female (spunky like [[Theatre/AsYouLikeIt Rosalind]]) or Epic Female (strong and noble like Eowyn).
16	** Sharpless, a lot like the modern audiences, reacts with shock as he learns Butterfly is only fifteen years old on the wedding day.
17	-->'''Sharpless''' (with indignation): Fifteen years?!
18	-->'''Pinkerton''' (nonchalantly): Fifteen years.
19	-->'''Sharpless''': An age for playing.
20	* FridgeLogic: How did Sharpless not ''already'' know Butterfly had given birth to Pinkerton's son? He's presumably been keeping an eye on her in the interim three years, but missed that ''huge'' detail?
21	* FridgeHorror: Apparently, these temporary marriages between American sailors and impoverished Japanese girls are a common practice...the girls get money for themselves and their families by becoming term-brides. In short, it's glorified prostitution masquerading as respectable marriage. Butterfly's family seems fine with her temporarily marrying an American, only disowning her when they find out she takes it seriously enough to renounce Shintoism and convert to Christianity. So it seems that they, along with Pinkerton, know the score about the nature of the "marriage." The only one who's not in on the joke is Butterfly herself. Which means that none of her family--none of the ''adults'' in the room, really--bothered to sit this fifteen-year-old girl down and explain exactly what she was getting into. In other words, this girl is a victim of trafficking...and doesn't even know she's being trafficked.
22	* HarsherInHindsight: Puccini wrote the opera in part to criticize America and the West's treatment of Japan, no doubt having things like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition Admiral Perry's forcible opening of Japan to trade]] in mind. But the theme resounds much more strongly to modern ears when you consider the opera is set in ''[[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Nagasaki]]''.
23	** To make matters worse, the opera itself was banished from the Metropolitan Opera after the United States declared war on Japan in 1941; it stayed out of the Met repertory for the rest of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
24	* LesYay: Out of context, The Flower Duet can come across as a love song (this gets {{lampshade\|Hanging}}d in ''Film/TheHunger'') due to the closeness between Butterfly and Suzuki.
25	* TearJerker: Definitely.

Context YMMV / MadameButterfly