Madama Butterfly/Madamu Batafurai : transpositions of a "Japanese tragedy" / Arthur Groos.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Groos, Arthur, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Puccini, Giacomo, 1858-1924. Madama Butterfly.

Puccini, Giacomo.

Geishas--Japan--Drama--History and criticism.

Geishas.

Temporary marriage--Japan--Drama--History and criticism.

Temporary marriage.

Orientalism in opera.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxv, 269 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Puccini's famous but controversial Madama Butterfly reflects a practice of 'temporary marriage' between Western men and Japanese women in nineteenth-century treaty ports. Groos' book identifies the plot's origin in an eye-witness account and traces its transmission via John Luther Long's short story and David Belasco's play. Archival sources, many unpublished, reveal how Puccini and his librettists imbued the opera with differing constructions of the action and its heroine. Groos's analysis suggests how they constructed a 'contemporary' music-drama with multiple possibilities for interpreting the misalliance between a callous American naval officer and an impoverished fifteen-year-old geisha, providing a more complex understanding of the heroine's presumed 'marriage'. As an orientalizing tragedy with a racially inflected representation of Cio-Cio-San, the opera became a lightning rod for identity politics in Japan, while also stimulating decolonizing transpositions into indigenous theatre traditions such as Bunraku puppet theatre and Takarazuka musicals.

Contents:

Introduction. "Marriage... in the Japanese Way"

Loti and Long - with an Eyewitness Account

Madama Butterfly : a conflicted genesis

Far West / Far East : Luigi Illica's Libretto

Madama Butterfly Between West and East

Returns of the Native : Madamu Batafurai in Japan

Returns of the Native : Imaginative Transpositions.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 Feb 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009250696 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.