6. Exoticism and tragedy.

At the beginning of the new century the conflict of interests between publishers and impresarios had reached its height when Puccini and Ricordi decided to return to La Scala for the first production of Madama Butterfly (17 February 1904). A hostile claque boycotted the performance. The work was withdrawn and revived three months later at Brescia. Puccini did not rewrite it but made some important changes. He divided the second act into two parts, which had almost no effect on the original structure, although the enormous strength of the earlier version, in which the audience shared Butterfly’s endless waiting, was lessened somewhat. He also cut many little scenes of local colour from Act 1, inserted Pinkerton’s brief aria and revised ‘Tu, tu, piccolo Iddio!’, making the voice rise to top A and increasing the emotional impact. Most significantly, he changed the theme which accompanied the heroine’s entrance and the associated melodic phrases, bringing forward the dissonance of the 7th and making the melody descend. This elongation increased the tension enormously, a crucial change given that the opera depends entirely on this theme.

Such ingenuity was inspired by a subject which had attracted Puccini at first sight when he attended a performance of David Belasco’s Madame Butterfly in London in June 1900. He was taken by the strongly sentimental drama, and thus delayed for a few more years complete acceptance of the changed role of the 20th-century composer.

The Japanese subject re-awakened his interest in the exotic, a subject which had been tried in early 20th-century theatre but had not really caught on in Italian opera. In order to create the atmosphere, Puccini questioned artists and representatives of Japanese culture, transcribed melodies from records sent from Tokyo and studied collections of Japanese songs. The exoticism of the opera caries great weight: almost half the first act alone is dedicated to Japanese colour, built on authentic themes (at least ten have been identified as genuine, or as arrangements of genuine themes). Puccini also introduced oriental or quasi-oriental touches into his harmonic language, drawing close to French composers, particularly Debussy. To give a characteristic tone to the tragedy he strengthened the percussion, including a tam-tam and Japanese bells along with campanelli a tastiera (glockenspiel) and tubular bells.

The use of a subject which marked a kind of return to the past had important effects on dramaturgy. Here, more than in any of his other works, Puccini came close to the Wagnerian process of leitmotif elaboration. This happened because for the first time he was faced with a psychological drama, dominated by a single female character who acts as a catalyst on the outer world. Cio-Cio-San, a 15-year-old girl, sees marriage as a way out of the dubious profession of a geisha. But she is deluding herself, and must restore the social order, which she has disturbed, by sacrificing herself. It is the eternal law of all tragedy, based on the increasingly acute conflict between the obstinacy of Butterfly’s convictions and the outside world from which she has become alienated. Musically themes are transformed until they become a reality which, at the very moment when the heroine’s conviction seems to be confirmed, gradually defeats her.

The macrostructure of the score is worked out with exact symmetry: an extended fugue opens the first act, symbolizing American efficiency; another fugue, much shorter, sounds wearily at the beginning of the next act, representing the heroine’s three years of loneliness. In the same way, a 6th chord, which closes the scene of the entrance of Butterfly and her friends, appears several times, notably at the end of the first act and in the tragic conclusion. It weaves a thread through the entire score, from the love duet, sustained by a refined Bögenform, to the great visionary solo, ‘Un bel dì vedremo’, to the final hummed chorus.

The exaggerated success of certain passages has done them harm. They are too frequently sung out of context, whereas they are in fact stages on which the drama hinges right up to its tragic epilogue. At the first French production in 1906, the director Albert Carré had the idea of showing the heroine’s isolation on stage by keeping Kate, Pinkerton’s wife, out of the room. Puccini supported him and in this way achieved a much more coherent dramatic perspective. The position of the American wife on the stage takes on a key importance. Kept outside the room she becomes a true phantom of the private obsessions of the unapproachable heroine, to whom she will remain alien. Moreover, her total lack of musical identity – only a few notes are devoted to her in a sound world in which everything is linked by notes – subordinates Kate to the function of a traumatic resolution. When Butterfly finds herself confronted by her she understands in a single instant what throughout the entire opera she has refused to understand.

The ending of the opera was thus made definitive, thanks to a few revisions. Butterfly dismisses everyone and remains alone with Suzuki, in the darkness, while the music whispers anxiously around her and the opera’s themes return, interwoven in feverish variations, reminding her of the past and propelling her towards her final decision. Finally death comes, with a piercing 6th chord, as the curtain falls. This last unresolved chord, recalling the finale of Act 1, reminds us that the 15-year-old child has become an 18-year-old woman on her last day of life, when the flight of the Butterfly has ceased for ever.

Puccini: (5) Puccini, Giacomo