Madama Butterfly/Madamu Batafurai
Transpositions of a 'Japanese Tragedy'

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 Archival sources, many unpublished, reveal how Puccini and his librettists imbued the opera with differing constructions of the action and its heroine.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.

Reviews & endorsements

'This timely and exceptional study of Madama Butterfly provides a valuable, well-documented and illuminating account of the origins of the work and aspects of its reception in Japan. It is a meticulous exploration of the significance of this tragedia giapponese that will make a lasting contribution to Puccini studies.' Naomi Matsumoto, Goldsmiths, University of London

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Product details

• Date Published: February 2023
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9781009250672
• length: 300 pages

• dimensions: 250 x 172 x 20 mm
• weight: 0.71kg
• availability: Not yet published - available from October 2024