A Race So Different. Joshua Chambers-Letson
with which the story was received was, no doubt, aided by the fact that, as noted earlier, 1898 was a significant year in the history of US imperial expansion into the Pacific.
Audiences in the United States were hungry for exotic stories of the Far East, and shortly after the book’s publication, Long collaborated with theater impresario David Belasco to adapt the story into a one-act play. A one-act version of Madame Butterfly premiered at New York’s Herald Square Theater at 10:00 p.m. on May 5, 1900, with a production price of $4,000.14 The play’s literary merits are less impressive than its historical and cultural significance, and it was a success primarily because of Belasco’s trademark technological innovation. The production received rave reviews and wowed audiences with its incorporation of emergent visual technologies made possible by the shift from gas to electric lighting. Belasco fused novel design elements with extreme naturalist conventions to produce an air of authenticity, convincing audiences that they were seeing an accurate representation of Japan and Japanese femininity.
Belasco wanted to use the magic of the theater to transport audiences into an exotic and otherworldly Japan. Reviewers reveled in the technological sophistication of the show, beginning with the opening moment in which, according to one review, a “drop curtain arose, disclosing another curtain split in the middle and bearing typical Japanese figures.”15 This gave way to a series of lushly painted screens depicting scenes from Japanese country life, described in the New York Times thus: “Beautifully illuminated views of the land of cherry blossoms in the time of cherry blossoms are shown. The setting sun illuminates the dome peak of Fujisan. There is one lovely water view. Thus, gradually, one is taken to Cho-Cho-San’s dainty little cottage, which is a perfect picture in all its details.”16 The set was a stunning performance of what Belasco imagined a Japanese home to be: walls lined with shoji screens, murals covering the fixed internal walls, and rich light pouring in from all angles. Another reviewer wrote, “Its pictures of Japanese life and domestic customs, . . . its brilliant display of color, its changing light effects, combine to make it a show that will be much talked about and that many persons will want to see.”17 This assessment proved correct, and audiences flocked to the production.
One of the primary draws of the evening was the technological simulation of the passage of time in an extended scene in which Cho-Cho-San waits through the night for Pinkerton’s return. The success of this spectacle must have been at least somewhat compelling, as actress Blanche Bates held the audience rapt for no less than fourteen minutes as she sat perfectly still in absolute silence as lighting effects evoked the breaking dawn amid the sounds of singing birds.18 As columnist Alan Dale waxed, “Even if I forget the story of ‘Mme. Butterfly’ the picture of Cho-Cho-San standing at the window from evening till night and from night till morning will remain impressed upon my memory.”19 The success of the production resulted in the transfer of an expanded three-act version of the play to London’s West End a few months later.
In London, the narrative architecture of Long’s story was once more kept in place, and most of the expansions aimed to give the characters increased psychological heft or to give audiences more of the exciting design elements that made the production a hit in New York. It starred ingénue Evelyn Millard in the title role, whose appearance was greatly anticipated in the press and was featured in a cover story for the Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News.20 Opera composer Giacomo Puccini sat in one of the audiences of the London production and soon after attained Belasco’s permission to adapt the story/play into an opera. Madama Butterfly debuted to a mixed reception at La Scala on February 17, 1904, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. After various revisions, a robust version returned to New York with a premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House on February 11, 1907, with famed soprano Geraldine Farrar in the title role.21 Again, the narrative remained fairly intact, with the majority of the adaptations made to accommodate Puccini’s lush Orientalist score. Shortly after this, Puccini completed revisions on what was to become the standard version of Madama Butterfly.
Madama Butterfly remains one of Puccini’s most popular operas in the United States and across the globe. Although my analysis of Belasco’s dramatization will reconstruct sections of the original one-act production that debuted in New York in 1900, my descriptions of the opera are drawn from the Met’s 2006 production, directed by the late Anthony Minghella. I turn to this particular production for a number of reasons. The production is part of the Metropolitan Opera’s recent mission to update its repertoires to draw in new audiences. This mission is based on the presupposition that classical operas, such as Madama Butterfly, maintain their cultural relevance and social importance in the twenty-first century. To promote the opera, the production was broadcast live in Times Square. It continues to be broadcast to movie theaters throughout the country and, indeed, the world. It is also available for purchase in DVD format or for viewing on the Met’s website for a small fee. If the argument can be made that Madama Butterfly is a relic of another era, I would suggest that the Met’s mediated promotion and hyperdistribution of Minghella’s production refutes this assumption. In other words, Butterfly has not left the building, and she does not show signs of doing so anytime soon.
Act I. “American Hardware”: Exclusion in Long’s House on Higashi Hill
As a manifestation of the United States’ juridical unconscious, one could say that Long’s 1898 novella is a text in which a US American lawyer imagines a Japanese woman imagining herself as she performs in response to US law. But even before Cho-Cho-San begins her fantasied journey into US jurisprudence, the domestic relations that structure her marriage to Pinkerton are neatly representative of dominant conceptions of US sovereignty in the early period of Pacific expansion. The novella begins with a domestic dispute about the exclusion of Cho-Cho-San’s family from Pinkerton’s home. This argument mirrors the legislative debates about Asian exclusion occurring in both federal and state legislatures and courtrooms at the turn of the century.
Figure 1.2. Metropolitan Opera premiere of Madama Butterfly, 1907. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera Archives.
In the opening sequence, Cho-Cho-San asks her new husband, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, to explain the hybrid construction of their home:
Some clever Japanese artisans then made the paper walls of the pretty house eye-proof, and, with their own adaptations of American hardware, the openings cunningly lockable. The rest was Japanese.
Madame Butterfly laughed, and asked him why he had gone to all that trouble—in Japan!22
This early sequence is significant of two concerns that run throughout the narrative: an attempt to define and demarcate the territory of US sovereignty beyond US borders, and the crisis of subject constitution posed by figures and spaces that exist between and across both the United States and Japan.
Pinkerton’s response to Cho-Cho-San’s question is instructive: “‘To keep out those who are out, and in those who are in,’ he replied, with an amorous threat in her direction.”23 I will return to the first half of his answer later, but here I want to emphasize his “amorous threat” as that which announces the sexual and imperial valences of the narrative. The locks on the house (with “openings cunningly lockable”) function as something of a chastity belt that locks Pinkerton’s sexual conquest away from the rest of the world. It simultaneously describes the US military’s adventures in the Eastern Hemisphere, with expansion into Asian-Pacific sovereignties and territories. This was exemplified by Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1853 expedition to Japan, when Perry forced the Tokogawa Shogunate into a trade agreement with the threat of a naval attack on Nagasaki. Michio Kitahara, working with concepts adopted from Erving Goffman, argues that Perry’s mission was explicitly staged as a performance: “Since the Japanese were not accustomed to deal[ing] with the Americans, the skillful presentation of ‘appearance,’ ‘manner,’ ‘setting,’ and ‘personal front’ by Perry’s squadron [allowed] the ‘performance team’ [to] manipulate the Japanese effectively, control their definition of the situation, and make them open the country.”24 It can hardly be incidental that Pinkerton