In 2023, Virginia Opera artistic director Adam Turner set up a Zoom meeting with Mo Zhou, the stage director behind acclaimed opera productions like Puccini’s La bohème and Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Turner wanted Zhou to direct a production of Madama Butterfly, and Zhou wasn’t crazy about the idea.
“I started my Zoom conference just telling him how much I dislike [that] opera,” said Zhou. “I avoided directing Madama Butterfly for the first 10 years of my career.”
It’s not a surprising stance for Chinese-born Zhou to take. Madama Butterfly, which premiered in Milan in 1904, has faced decades of criticism for orientalism and exoticism.
The play stars Cio-Cio-San, the titular “Butterfly, a 15-year-old Japanese girl who marries American naval officer Pinkerton. He impregnates her, then abandons her for three years when he returns to the United States and marries an American woman, Kate. Pinkerton and Kate return to Nagasaki, and Kate offers to raise the child. Cio-Cio-San agrees to give up her child if she can see Pinkerton again, then takes her own life.
“The issue I have always had with the show is … when people romanticize the story purely as a love story,” said Zhou. “Even if you look at the original time period, there is such a clear power imbalance between the genders and the cultures.”
After avoiding the show for so long, Zhou eventually took on a production which premiered at the Virginia Opera in March 2024. During the intermission of a performance, an American veteran approached her and explained that, due to the popularity of Madama Butterfly in the United States, many American soldiers deployed to Japan wanted to find “their butterfly.”
Zhou brought the knowledge gained from her previous productions to the Calgary Opera’s version. In her version, the show opens in 1946, a year after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Pinkerton’s absence of three years is extended to six, and when he returns to Japan, the American occupation has ended.
“Without changing a single word in the opera, everything becomes elevated and deepens every character’s motivations,” said Zhou.
The lighting, set, and costume designers are Japanese women who bring their personal experiences to the visuals. Costume designer Mariko Ohigashi’s own family was affected by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The kimonos she has sourced for the production were all made in Japan, and a local professional kimono dresser will be on set to ensure the accuracy of the costumes.
“It’s very rare that you get to do Butterfly with an all-Japanese design team,” said Zhou. “My lighting designer … said she feels like Asian women reclaim ownership [of the] storytelling.”
To ignore racial insensitivity in older works of art is to ignore a piece of history, and various operas have tried to reconcile this problem with their own variations on Butterfly.
In 2017, Seattle Opera’s production filled the theatre’s lobby with displays of historical examples of Asian stereotyping. Detroit Opera’s 2023 version set the show in the modern day, with an anime-obsessed Pinkerton playing through the events of the show in a VR headset.
“I think it’s very important for opera [that] we provide critical analysis of those classic canons that stand the test of time … so it becomes more relevant with the modern audiences.”
The appropriation in the original Butterfly can be off-putting. But the themes of the show are what have resonated with audiences for decades.
“It’s relevant to anyone who’s experienced unrequited love in their life. It’s relevant to anyone who’s persisted with a dream,” said Sue Elliott, Calgary Opera general director and CEO. “[It’s] relevant to our society, where people from different cultures coexist, sometimes really, really peacefully and joyfully, and other times when tension comes to the fore.”
If you’ve never been to an opera, it can seem a little intimidating. When people go to the opera in the movies, they’re dressed to the nines, and the performers are singing in a different language. But all the shows have subtitles, and it doesn’t need to be an extravagant affair.
“Be brave,” said Elliott. “There’s only one rule about what to wear … at Calgary Opera. You have to wear something. So you can come in jeans, you can come in pearls, you can come in a tux. You can come in a costume — however you want to dress.”
Catch Madama Butterfly at the Jubilee, November 1 to 7. Tickets available at calgaryopera.com.
