BLO Guide | Madama Butterfly

A GUIDE TO THE OPERA

BOSTON LYRICOPERA

MADAMA BUTTERFLY

BOSTONLYRICOPERA

September 2023

Dear Opera Curious and Opera-Lovers alike, Boston Lyric Opera is pleased to welcome you to the Emerson Colonial Theater as we present Puccini’s lush and sweeping classic. In a brand-new production of Madama Butterfly presented in 1940s America in the shadow of World War II, we explore the experience of Japanese Americans during a critical moment in US history. In San Francisco on the eve of Pearl Harbor, Butterfly, a nightclub performer, contributing to the war effort, and Pinkerton, a young soldier on the eve of his deployment, meet and fall in love. The production is a culmination of our multi-year initiative, The Butterfly Process, which sought to critically examine the opera, and present it for multi-cultural American audiences today.

Opera is an art form that can contain big emotions. The experience of seeing and hearing live, professional opera is one of a kind, and we encourage you to explore the world of the opera outside the theater as well. We are proud to offer this Guide to support your engagement with this opera. Please note that this Guide describes plot details. Our intent is to provide support in historical as well as contemporary context, along with tools to thoughtfully reflect on the opera before or after you attend.

Boston Lyric Opera inspires, entertains, and connects communities through compelling performances, programs, and gatherings. Our vision is to create operatic moments that enrich everyday life. As we continue to develop additional Guides, we want your feedback. Please tell us about how you use this guide and how it can best serve your learning and engagement needs by emailing education@blo.org

If you’re interested in engaging with us further and learning about additional opera education opportunities with Boston Lyric Opera, please visit blo.org/education to discover our programs and initiatives.

See you at the opera!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Ann S. Kirk, M.Ed. Director of Community and Learning

MADAMA BUTTERFLY A GUIDE TO THE OPERA SYNOPSIS

Traditionally, the opera Madama Butterfly follows the story of a young Japanese girl, Cio-Cio San (Butterfly) and her encounter and subsequent relationship with B.F. Pinkerton, a soldier in the US navy. In the original opera, their story takes place in early-1900s Japan, and Butterfly is a geisha, or female hostess, entertainer, performing artist, who “comes with” the house that Pinkerton rents while stationed in Japan. Although Butterfly falls in love with Pinkerton, Pinkerton has always intended to marry a “real” American wife. He and Butterfly become lovers, and she becomes pregnant and gives birth to his child without his knowledge after Pinkerton leaves Japan. Three years later, Pinkerton returns with his American wife, Kate. Upon learning of his child, he intends to take him back to America. Seeing how Butterfly has joyfully decorated the house to celebrate his return, Pinkerton decides he cannot face her and leaves others to break the news of his marriage to Kate. Disillusioned and heartbroken, Butterfly places a blindfold over her son’s eyes and an American flag in his hands so his father will recognize him before she chooses to honorably kill herself.

Boston Lyric Opera’s September production of Madama Butterfly relocates this story to WWII-era San Francisco with Butterfly and Pinkerton both living as US citizens. Their story – this time a sincere love story — unfolds through the lens of 1940s wartime society and politics in America, a crucial moment in the lived experiences of the thousands of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in the wake of the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. Act I opens at a Chinatown nightclub in San Francisco, where Butterfly is a performer, and her friend Suzuki is a member of the waitstaff. Pinkerton, a lieutenant in the US military, enters the club,

Madama Butterfly ’s libretto cover, circa 1920. Public Domain

Set Rendering by Yu Shibagaki. Inspired by “Forbidden City, USA: Chinatown Nightclubs, 1936-1970” by Arthur Dong. Courtesy of Yu Shibagaki

joining a milling crowd of regular patrons, newcomers, sailors, and servicemen. We see nightclub performers in various styles of costumes and meet some other characters, including Goro, the nightclub’s owner, and Uncle Bonze, a local shopkeeper. At last, Butterfly enters, and her beauty mesmerizes Pinkerton. It turns out that the nightclub’s final act for the evening involves two people – a performer and an audience member – in a pretend wedding ceremony that begins with extravagance and ends with simplicity. Pinkerton is chosen to “marry” Butterfly as part of the performance. Afterward, they linger together and start to fall in love. Act I ends with with a joyful, celebratory atmosphere – a last golden moment set apart from the harsh realities of war.

The prelude to Act II opens on a very different scene. We hear the sounds of airplanes, 1940s-era newsreels, and announcements of the Japanese military’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Pinkerton is sent to war, and we learn that

CHARACTERS

• Butterfly – a young nightclub singer in San Francisco’s Chinatown

• Suzuki – her friend, a member of the nightclub’s waitstaff

• B.F. Pinkerton – a US military officer on the eve of his deployment

• Sharpless – a member of the US military

• Goro – the owner of the nightclub

the US government has authorized incarceration camps in which over 120,000 Japanese American citizens of all ages are to be imprisoned on suspicion of espionage and treason. A pregnant Butterfly and her companion Suzuki are ushered into one of these camps. As the second act opens, we see the dismal, cold barracks in which Butterfly now lives with her child and Suzuki. The child is sick, and his health is made worse by conditions in the camp. Butterfly hopes that his father, Pinkerton, will return and use his status as a member of the US military to help his child.

Suzuki is skeptical, but Butterfly remains hopeful.

In Act III, Pinkerton arrives at the incarceration camp with his new wife, Kate. Butterfly agrees to let Pinkerton and his wife take their child to get him the medical care he needs. She begins to pack her child’s belongings while saying goodbye for the last time, as her heart is shattered.

• Uncle Bonze –a local shopkeeper, an uncle of the community

• Kate Pinkerton – Pinkerton’s new wife

• Signor Dori – Butterfly’s suitor, whom she rejects

• Commissioner

• Registrar

Butterfly costume rendering by Sara Ryung Clement, inspired by historical individuals like Dorothy Toy (1917-2019). Courtesy of Sara Ryung Clement

Suzuki’s costume rendering by Sara Ryung Clement. Courtesy of Sara Ryung Clement

Costume rendering for Goro by Sara Ryung Clement. Courtesy of Sara Ryung Clement

GIACOMO PUCCINI & THE MAKING OF MADAMA BUTTERFLY

Born on December 22, 1858, in Lucca, a town in the Tuscany region of Italy, Puccini’s life and work bridge the 19th and 20th centuries. Musically, he was influenced by what we now call the Romantic Era, and he is a significant contributor to The Golden Age of Opera. The Golden Age of Opera is primarily defined by verismo, a literary and artistic movement that sought to depict the world more realistically. In contrast to his contemporaries, Puccini lived on the edge between one age and the next. He was inspired by the composers of the 19th century while engaged with technology of the 20th century. He worked with the latest recording technology, composing music that would fit on wax cylinders. He was alive when the medium of film was born and exploded into the culture, first silent, then with sound, but always with musical accompaniment. Puccini revered composers like Verdi and Wagner and was fascinated by how other cultures and new technologies influenced music and sought to bring that to his own work.

A STORY OF ADAPTATION

Puccini often drew inspiration from other texts and frequently adapted plays and novels to the operatic form. In 1900, Puccini attended a performance of David Belasco’s play Madame Butterfly and decided to adapt it into an opera. Interestingly enough, Belasco’s Madame Butterfly was also an adaptation. It was inspired by a short story published in 1898 of the same name by John Luther Long. John Luther Long’s short story was a response to Pierre Loti’s 1887 novel, Madame Chrysanthème.

In the context of operatic tradition, verismo, or “realism,” meant that composers like Puccini began composing music in a new way, moving away from older musical structures that often included artificial phrasing and significant repetition of phrases to a more realistic, narrative style of text setting. Puccini and his contemporaries sought to shape their characters’ interactions with each other and their environments more authentically, blurring the lines between sections of scenes instead of making musical choices that clearly marked ends and beginnings of scenes, but felt less real. Puccini’s operatic music balances sparsely textured conversational sections with lush, lyrical passages conveying deep emotions in a similar tradition to Verdi. These contrasting orchestrations are often woven together by small musical ideas called leitmotifs, or recurring musical themes associated with a particular person or idea.

Alongside verismo, Puccini’s music includes another major trend in Western music of his time: exoticism, an interest in representing people, places, and cultures other than the artist’s own. Many modern scholars and critics point out the imperialist implications of this trend in this context. This

Giacomo Puccini, ca. 1907. Photo by Frank C. Bangs.

Puccini in April 1908.

Photo by A.

Exterior of La Scala Opera House Madama Butterfly first premiered. Christophe Benoist Creative Commons

movement manifested in a tendency for Western artists of all mediums to exoticize non-Western ideals and subjects, often emphasizing “foreign” or “othering” aspects of cultures while either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresenting cultures and depicting them inauthentically. For Madama Butterfly, Puccini engaged artists and representatives of Japanese culture, transcribed melodies from records sent from Tokyo, and studied collections of Japanese songs to try to capture an authentic representation of Japanese culture and music for the sound world of this opera. He also expanded the percussion section with a tam-tam, “Japanese bells,” glockenspiel, and tubular bells. Even with these efforts, Madama Butterfly is an Italian opera meant to appeal to the Italian audiences of Puccini’s day.

PUCCINI’S PRIMARY SOURCES

Puccini met with Madame Oyama, the wife to the Japanese Ambassador stationed in Rome, who, according to Puccini’s letters to his publisher, sang to Puccini and promised to send him music. Rudolf Dittrich’s collection of Japanese songs for piano was also used as inspiration by Puccini. Many Puccini scholars also believe Puccini might have witnessed a performance by Sada Yacco, a famous Geisha and actress, while she was on tour through Europe.

Madama Butterfly premiered in 1904, following some of Puccini’s greatest operatic successes that included La bohème (1896) and Tosca (1900), which had established him as a respected composer. Yet for Madama Butterfly’s opening night at Italy’s famous opera house La Scala, it was booed and quickly withdrawn by Puccini for revisions before being revived at a different theater three months later. In the following years, Puccini made a total of five versions of Madama Butterfly. Among the changes made were an aria for Pinkerton, splitting the second act into Acts II and III, and reducing the role of Kate Pinkerton, even giving some of her sung material to Butterfly, whose vocal presence dominates much of the opera. He also edited the vocal and orchestral scores, cut some of the comedic scenes, and edited out many of Pinkerton’s more blatantly racist comments. The standard and most performed version was finalized in 1907.

Puccini’s later operas, including Madama Butterfly (1904), La fanciulla del West (1910), and Turandot (1926), explored characters and themes from cultures and countries very different from his own – cultures he had little personal experience with. While today, many consider these operas to be culturally appropriative (and rightly so), we can also see that Puccini was telling human stories – ones that showed the audiences of his day the emotional complexity we all share and the ability of music to bridge our differences.

DISCUSS: If you were adapting your favorite book, comic, or video game into a play or movie, what facets of the story would be essential to keep?

How do you determine the balance between honoring the source material and changes that may be necessary when adapting it to a new medium?

A. Dupont.

Sada Yacco (1871-1946), a famous Geisha and actress, reading. Public Domain

in Milan where premiered. Photo by JeanCommons

MADAMA BUTTERFLY’S HISTORICAL AND THE LEGACY OF ORIENTALISM

The term “orientalism” was first coined in 1978 by Edward Said in his book Orientalism. By Said’s definition, orientalism assumes Western superiority, paints Asian cultures as barbaric and contributes to the infantilization and over-sexualization of Asian people. In Said’s book, he writes that orientalism is an assertion of power and dominance by the West, particularly by European countries, and that it is a violent fantasy with the intent of dehumanization and exploitation. Today, orientalism is found in the othering, commodifying, exotifying, flattening, and homogenizing Asian culture.

Puccini wrote Madama Butterfly during a period of new, heightened Western fascination with Japan. Throughout most of the 19th century, Japan had limited exchange with Western countries, only allowing the Dutch contact through the port at Nagasaki. However, this changed when American Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo harbor in 1853. The United States, which was beginning to experience a manufacturing bloom, began to seek out new countries for trading goods. Perry, captaining four ships, demanded Japan begin trade with the United States. At the time, Japan’s military and naval forces were limited compared to the more modernized American naval ships, and thus, Japan was forced to comply and sign a series of unequal treaties, or treaties that heavily benefited Western countries and limited sovereignty for Eastern countries. The forced trade deal opened a new era in history for Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate,

AN UNEQUAL TREATY

In 1858, the Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed between the United States and Japan, opening Nagasaki and four other cities as trading ports to the US This unequal treaty also allowed for United States citizens to own property in the treaty ports, and enforced extraterritoriality, an international law that allowed foreigners to not be held accountable to Japanese laws, but to the laws of their home countries. In the traditional versions of Madama Butterfly, Pinkerton is stationed in Nagasaki and able to rent or purchase property, as well as act with relative impunity, because of the clauses in the Treaty of Amity and Commerce.

the Japanese government from 1603 to 1868, was overthrown and replaced by the Meiji government, which brought about rapid industrialization in both the military and in manufacturing, and also established new political and noble social classes. Labor movements emerged in the mining and textile industries, using tactics such as strikes and riots. Then came increased industrialization, the introduction of wage labor, and,

American Commodore, Matthew Perry, Public Domain

WHAT IS YELLOWFACE?

eventually, the Japanese trade-union movement. By the 1890s, Japan’s industries became global competitors. Japanese goods, such as textiles, ceramics, and paintings, were highly sought after and coveted. Japan also became a significant military power during this period of rapid growth. Japan won a war against China in 1895 over the colonial rule of Korea, highlighting Japan’s increased presence on the global stage.

Yellowface is the practice of non-Asian, usually white, actors portraying Asian characters, and more specifically, East Asian characters. It requires the exotification and exaggeration of certain features, such as skin color or eye shape, and is a major contributor to orientalism. While yellowface can be traced back to the 18th century, it is still widely used by Hollywood, the American theatre, and other performing arts, including opera. The use of yellowface is similar to the practices of blackface, brownface, and redface, all of which rely on offensive, racist stereotypes. Twenty-first-century examples include the casting of Scarlett Johansson in the 2017 film adaptation Ghost in the Shell and the casting of Emma Stone in the 2015 film Aloha

In the more than hundred years since Madama Butterfly’s composition, its production history has routinely reinforced racist practices, from the cultural appropriation of traditional clothing and traditions to the use of yellowface. Orientalism in opera and other art forms has also contributed to racist stereotyping and pigeonholing of Asian artists. As discussed in Boston Lyric Opera’s 2021/22 Butterfly Process: Orientalism and Cultural Appropriation, Asian artists are often relegated to only work on “Asian” stories and roles, limiting

their creative reach. As Mari Yoshihara noted in her book, Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music, Asian musicians are seen as highly skilled in only the technical elements of musicianship and not in the artistry of expression. These beliefs, rooted in the long history of orientalism, can and do hinder Asian artists in Western countries.

The practice of combatting orientalism begins like any antiracist practice – by decentering the white gaze and white voices and recentering Asian voices telling Asian stories, without pigeonholing artists. It must be done with intention, compassion, a desire for multicultural art, and a willingness to listen, accept feedback, and grow.

DISCUSS: : Puccini liked to tell stories set in cultures that were not his own, and today his work is often seen as cultural appropriation. What is the difference between being inspired by another culture that is not your own and borrowing or imitating it?

Commodore, Perry, 1856–1857, Domain

Amity and held at The Archives of the Affairs of Creative Commons

The Tokugawa kamon, or, the crest of the Tokugawa family who founded the the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled the Japanese government during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Creative Commons

JAPANESE INCARCERATION IN WORLD WAR II

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese military bombed the United States naval base Pearl Harbor. This attack came after the US embargoed shipments of petroleum and other necessary war materials to Japan and froze Japanese assets in response to Japan’s new allegiance to the Axis powers, Germany and Italy. Eight US battleships were damaged or destroyed and there were 3,600 US military casualties. Then-president Franklin Roosevelt declared it “a date which will live in infamy.”

This date spurred the US into a combative role in the Second World War and launched a wave of xenophobic fear against Japanese Americans. In February 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which called for the “internment” and “relocation” of Japanese Americans, banned Japanese Americans from certain US regions and military areas, and enforced a curfew upon Japanese Americans. On March 21, 1942, Congress passed Public Law 503, which stated that if someone was found in violation of Executive Order 9066, they could be met with a $5,000 fine or up

to a year in prison. On March 29, 1942, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which forced Japanese Americans to leave their homes within 48 hours. Many Japanese American homes, communities, businesses, farms, and belongings were irrevocably lost, totaling an estimated 400 million dollars stolen from Japanese Americans. Over 120,000 people of Japanese descent were imprisoned in incarceration camps from when Executive Order 9066 was signed in 1942 to when the last camp closed in 1946. Two-thirds of the people imprisoned were citizens born in the United States. The first camp was built in California and named Manzanar. Eventually, ten total camps were erected across California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Arkansas. Families were made to share uninsulated, tar-paper barracks, fenced in with barbed wire and patrolled by army guards with instructions to shoot anyone they believed to be

This photo, entitled “Japanese American Grocer” by Dorothea Lang, is of a JapaneseAmerican grocery store on December 8, 1941 the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Public Domain

The entrance to Manzanar, taken in 2011. Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons

A sign depicting “last call” to up suits and in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo, July 1942. Public Domain

Japanese Americans Tule Lake in harvesting spinach in September Photograph Stewart. Public Domain

This photo by Dorothea Lang is of an eviction notice in San Francisco addressed to people of Japanese heritage in April of 1942, after the signing of Executive Order 9066. Public Domain

attempting to escape. Despite this, those imprisoned still fostered community in the camps – they set up schools and churches, wrote newspapers, played sports, and more. However the lasting impact and trauma for Japanese Americans of living under surveillance, suspicion, and fear cannot be overstated.

There were few protests and legal fights to combat the incarceration of Japanese Americans. The Supreme Court saw two court cases represented by The American Civil Liberties Union: 1943’s Hirabayashi v. United States and 1944’s Korematsu v. United States, but the ACLU lost both trials. Both cases challenged parts of Executive Order 9066, Hirabayashi v. United States specifically challenging the curfew while Korematsu v. United States specifically challenged the the exclusion of Japanese Americans from from specific US regions. In both trials, the Supreme Court upheld Executive Order 9066.

While some families were deemed “loyal” by the US government and released early, it wasn’t until December 18, 1944, that the closure of the incarceration camps was announced, with the intention that the camps would close by 1945. However, the last incarceration camp was not closed until the spring of 1946, and it wasn’t until 1976 that Executive Order 9066 was repealed. In 1988, the United States

government issued letters of apology to approximately 80,000 survivors, accompanied by reparations of $20,000 per survivor.

The first camp, Manzanar, is now a National Historic Site to preserve the memory of those incarcerated. Nearly 6,000 children were born in incarceration camps, and nearly 2,000 people died in incarceration. The trauma endured by the Japanese Americans who were wrongfully detained has impacted future generations’ mental, physical, and economic wellbeing. The legacy of these camps is yet another dark, racist moment in United States history, and it is imperative to recognize what Japanese Americans endured.

REFLECT REFLECT

The streets of Manzanar in the spring of 1943. Photograph by Ansel Adams. Public Domain

What are other ways to memorialize the history of what was endured by Japanese Americans during World War II?

depicting the pick gowns Angeles’s circa Public

A drawing class for children at Minidoka in Idaho, December 9, 1942. Public Domain

Americans at California spinach September 1942. by Francis Public

Manzanar memorial designed by Ryozo Kado. In 1943, the Japanese Americans held at Manzanar, include Ryozo Kado, designed and erected this monument to honor those who had died while incarcerated. The Japanese kanji characters translate to “Soul Consoling Tower.” Creative Commons

THE MEMORY OF DOROTHY TOY

In Boston Lyric Opera’s new production, Butterfly works as a singer in a nightclub while contributing to the US war effort. Our interpretation of Butterfly’s character is inspired by real-life individuals like Dorothy Toy (1917-2019), a famed Japanese American dancer who broke barriers for Asian American performers in Vaudeville, Hollywood, and Broadway.

Dorothy Toy, born Shigeko Takahashi in San Francisco, grew up in Los Angeles, where her parents operated a restaurant across the street from a vaudeville theater. The theater’s manager would see her dancing outside the restaurant and recommended that she take lessons. Dorothy could dance on pointe from an early age. Her career began to take off in the 1930s, and her best-known dance partner was a Chinese American man named Paul Wing. They performed as Toy and Wing, often billing themselves as a Chinese American dance team and playing major houses in the US. While Paul was Chinese American, Dorothy was of Japanese heritage, but decided to perform under a Chinese surname due to growing anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. Their act included a mix of soft shoe, jitterbug, and ballroom dance, among other styles. They were the first Asian Americans to play the London Palladium, performing in England when WWII broke out. Paul was drafted into the US military, effectively ending their dance partnership, although they did

sometimes dance together in later years. While the popularity of vaudeville acts such as theirs diminished after the war, Dorothy continued her own career as a dancer, performing in clubs like Forbidden City in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She also formed her own troupe, which toured in the 1960s and 1970s and did particularly well in Canada. Although she performed in some TV and film productions, she preferred performing onstage for live audiences. Later in life, Dorothy worked as a pharmaceutical technician and gave dance lessons. She is survived by a daughter and a son.

RESOURCES

Websites

Cantoni, Linda and Schwarm, Betsy. “Madama Butterfly”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Jun. 2023, https://www. britannica.com/topic/Madama-Butterfly.

Chan, Phil, et a. “The Butterfly Process.” Boston Lyric Opera. https://blo.org/butterfly-process/

Frail, T. A. (2017, January 5). The Injustice of JapaneseAmerican Internment Camps Resonates Strongly to This Day. Smithsonian Magazine; Smithsonian. https://www. smithsonianmag.com/history/injustice-japanese-americansinternment-camps-resonates-strongly-180961422/

Genzlinger, N. (2019, August 1). Dorothy Toy, 102, Half of Asian-American Dance Team, Dies (Published 2019). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/ arts/dorothy-toy-dead.html

Jenkins, Chadwick. “Opera Project: Madama Butterfly.” Columbia University, www.columbia.edu/itc/music/opera/ butterfly/

Katz, B. (2019, August 5). Remembering Dorothy Toy, a Dazzling Asian-American Tap Dance Star. Smithsonian Magazine; Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ smart-news/remembering-dorothy-toy-dazzling-asianamerican-dance-star-180972819/

National Archives. (2017, April 10). Japanese Relocation During World War II. National Archives; The US National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives. gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation

The National WWII Museum. (2018). Japanese American Incarceration. The National WWII Museum | New Orleans; The National WWII Museum. https://www. nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japanese-americanincarceration

PBS NewsHour . (2017, February 22). Remembering Japanese Internment, 75 Years Later | PBS NewsHour. PBS LearningMedia; PBS. https://mass.pbslearningmedia. org/resource/internment-pbs-newshour/rememberingjapanese-internment-75-years/

Verghese, Namrata. “What Is Orientalism? A Stereotyped, Colonialist Vision of Asian Cultures.” Teen Vogue, 13 Oct. 2021, www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-orientalism.

Yamaguchi, M. (2021, April 13). Internment or incarceration? Why words matter to describe the Japanese American wartime experience. https://Www.hawaiinewsnow. com; Hawaii News Now. https://www.hawaiinewsnow. com/2021/04/13/internment-or-incarceration-whywords-matter-describe-japanese-american-wartimeexperience/

Journal Articles and Books

Kondo, Dorinne K. “‘M. Butterfly’: Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist Identity.” Cultural Critique, no. 16, 1990, pp. 5–29. JSTOR, https://doi. org/10.2307/1354343.

Yoshihara, M. (2008). Musicians from a different shore : Asians and Asian Americans in classical music. Temple University Press ; Chesham.

Videos

Chan, Phil, and Kunio Hara. “The Birth of Butterfly through WWII: The First 50 Years.” YouTube, uploaded by Boston Lyric Opera, 14 Dec. 2021, http://blo.org/butterflyprocess/.

Chan, Phil, et al. “Orientalism & Cultural Appropriation.” YouTube, uploaded by Boston Lyric Opera, 18 Jan. 2022, http://blo.org/butterfly-process/.

Confluence Concerts. (2022, February 22). Grappling with Madama Butterfly Today: Representation, Reclamation, Re-imagination. Www.youtube.com; Confluence Concerts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuSApxmGWQw

Kasahara, T. (2022, February 11). バタフライ• プロジェ クト：蝶々夫人のバラード The Butterfly Project: The Ballad of Chō-Chō San. Www.youtube.com. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=i4FbvlYuaCA

Quan, R. (2019, October 9). Dancing through Life: The Dorothy Toy Story. Www.youtube.com. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=YqPZEGjFvuU

LISTEN UP!

1. Puccini quotes the United States National Anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” several times in the music of Madama Butterfly.

Listen to tenor Pinkerton’s Act I aria “Dovunque al mondo” (“Everywhere in the world”).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7umcEdWcc8&t=17s

• When do you hear “The Star-Spangled Banner” quoted? (Hint: It is quoted more than once!).

• Does this recognizable melody come as a surprise, or does it feel pretty natural in this score?

• From what you have read about the plot, what do you think Puccini is trying to say about Pinkerton’s character in quoting “The Star-Spangled Banner” in his aria? How does it make you feel about the character? Listen closely - You may hear some English words amidst the Italian lyrics!

2. Certain well-known Japanese folk songs were written using the notes of a five-note pentatonic scale. In Madama Butterfly, Puccini sometimes writes using the notes of this scale, rather than with the notes of an eight-note major scale - the scale most often used in Italy at the time this opera was written, and the scale we, in the United States, hear most often today.

Listen to this pentatonic scale a couple times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIC91yptZwA

Now, listen to this recording of the Japanese folk song “Sakura” (“Cherry Blossoms”). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hvo4Db3NT8

• Do you hear the pentatonic scale being used? How do these instances sound the same or different from the music you are used to hearing?

Listen to “C’è. Entrate” (“There is. Enter”) from Act II of Madama Butterfly. You will hear three singers – tenor Goro, baritone Sharpless, and soprano Butterfly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxVZp50Wpkg

• Is it easy or hard to recognize the pentatonic scale in this number?

• Why does Puccini use the pentatonic scale in his opera? What does your answer suggest about Puccini’s attitude toward Japan and Japanese music?

Try this: If you play only the black keys on a piano, you will be using the notes of a pentatonic scale!

3. Listen to the Act II “Humming Chorus”. The ensemble performing this chorus most often sings (or hums!) from backstage, unseen by the audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-rKxGZSRKk

In this scene, Butterfly silently awaits the return of her husband, Pinkerton. She is joined by her son and her friend and fellow nightclub employee, Suzuki.

• How does this music make you feel? What do you think this chorus says about how Butterfly is feeling?

• If Puccini didn’t want to use words in this piece, why do you think he chose to have voices perform it, instead of just writing it for instruments?

GENERAL QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR LISTENING

• What instruments do you hear?

• How fast is the music? Are there sudden changes in speed? Is the rhythm steady or unsteady?

• Key/Mode: Is it major or minor? (Does it sound bright, happy, sad, urgent, dangerous?)

• Dynamics/Volume: Is the music loud or soft? Are there sudden changes in volume (either in the voice or orchestra)?

• What is the shape of the melodic line? Does the voice move smoothly or does it make frequent or erratic jumps? Do the vocal lines move noticeably downward or upward?

• Does the type of voice singing (baritone, soprano, tenor, mezzo, etc.) have an effect on you as a listener?

• Do the melodies end as you would expect, or do they surprise you?

• How does the music make you feel? What effect do the above factors have on you as a listener?

• What is the orchestra doing in contrast to the voice? How do they interact?

• What kinds of images, settings, or emotions come to mind? Does it remind you of anything you have experienced in your own life?

• Do particularly emphatic notes (low, high, held, etc.) correspond to dramatic moments?

• What type of character fits this music? Romantic? Comic? Serious? Etc.

THE HISTORY OF OPERA

People have been telling stories through music for millennia throughout the world. Opera is an art form with roots in Western Europe that is over 400 years old. Here is a brief timeline of its lineage.

RENAISSANCE

1573 The Florentine Camerata was founded in Italy, devoted to reviving ancient Greek musical traditions, including sung drama.

1598 Jacopo Peri, a member of the Camerata, composed the world’s first opera – Dafne, reviving the classic myth.

1607 Claudio Monteverdi

(1567-1643) wrote the first opera to become popular, L’Orfeo, marking him as the premier opera composer of his day and bridging the gap between Renaissance and Baroque music. His works are still performed today.

Toccata from L’Orfeo. Claudio Monteverdi Favola in musica. Reprint of the First Edition of the Score, Venice 1609 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

1637 The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, was built in Venice, Italy.

BAROQUE (1600-1750)

1673 Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), an Italian-born composer, brought opera to the French court, creating a unique style, tragédie en musique, that better suited the French language. Blurring the lines between recitative and aria, he created fast-paced dramas to suit the tastes of French aristocrats.

1689 Henry Purcell’s (1659-1695) simple and elegant chamber opera, Dido and Aeneas, premiered at Josias Priest’s boarding school for girls in London.

1712 George Frederic Handel (1685-1759), a German-born composer, moved to London, where he found immense success writing intricate and highly ornamented Italian opera seria (serious opera). Ornamentation refers to stylized, fast-moving notes, usually improvised by the singer to make a musical line more interesting and to showcase their vocal talent.

Dido and Aeneas, 1747, Pompeo Batoni [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

CLASSICAL (1730-1820)

1805 Ludwig van Beethoven

(1770-1827), although a prolific composer, wrote only one opera, Fidelio. The extremes of musical expression in Beethoven’s music pushed the boundaries in the late Classical period and inspired generations of Romantic composers.

1750s A reform movement, led by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), rejected the flashy ornamented style of the Baroque in favor of simple, refined music to enhance the drama.

1816

Gioachino Rossini

1767

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote his first opera at age 11, beginning his 25-year opera career. Mozart mastered, then innovated, in several operatic forms. He wrote opera serias (serious operas), including La Clemenza di Tito, and opera buffas (comedic operas) like Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) He then combined the two genres in Don Giovanni, calling it dramma giocoso (comedic drama). Mozart also innovated the Singspiel (German sung play), featuring a spoken dialogue, as in Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

(1792-1868) composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), becoming the most prodigious opera composer in Italy by age 24. He wrote 39 operas in 20 years. A new compositional style created by Rossini and his contemporaries, including Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini, would, a century later, be referred to as bel canto (beautiful singing). Bel canto compositions were inspired by the nuanced vocal capabilities of the human voice and its expressive potential. Composers employed strategic use of register, the push and pull of tempo (rubato), extremely smooth and connected phrases (legato), and vocal glides (portamento).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Posthumous painting by Barbara Krafft in 1819 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Magic Flute playbill for the premiere, 30 September 1791 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

1853 Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) completed La Traviata, a story of love, loss, and the struggle of average people, in the increasingly popular realistic style of verismo. Verdi enjoyed immense acclaim during his lifetime, while expanding opera to include larger orchestras, extravagant sets and costumes, and more highly trained voices.

ROMANTIC (1790-1910)

The Golden Age of Opera

1842 Inspired by the risqué popular entertainment of French vaudeville, Hervé created the first operetta, a short comedic musical drama with spoken dialogue. Responding to popular trends, this new form stood in contrast to the increasingly serious and dramatic works at the grand Parisian opera house. Opéra comique as a genre was often not comic, rather realistic or humanistic. Grand opera, on the contrary, was exaggerated and melodramatic.

1865 Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) Tristan und Isolde was the beginning of musical modernism, pushing the use of traditional harmony to its extreme. His massively ambitious, lengthy operas, often based in German folklore, sought to synthesize music, theater, poetry, and visuals in what he called a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). The most famous of these was an epic four-opera drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen, which took him 26 years to write and was completed in 1874.

1871 Influenced by French operetta, English librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) began their 25-year partnership, which produced 14 comic operettas, including The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Their works inspired the genre of American musical theater.

Giuseppe Verdi, by Giovanni Boldini, 1886 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Richard Wagner. Photo taken 1871 in Munich via Wikimedia Commons

ROMANTIC (1790-1910)

1874

Johann Strauss II, (1825-1899)

influenced largely by his father, with whom he shared a name and talent, composed Die Fledermaus, popularizing Viennese musical traditions, namely the waltz, and shaping operetta

1896

Giacomo Puccini’s, (1858-1924) La Bohème captivated audiences with its intensely beautiful music, realism, and raw emotion. Puccini enjoyed huge acclaim during his lifetime for his works.

1911 Scott Joplin, (1868-1917) “The King of Ragtime,” wrote his only opera, Treemonisha, which was not performed until 1972. The work combined the European lateRomantic operatic style with African American folk songs, spirituals, and dances.

1927 American musical theater, commonly referred to as Broadway, was taken more seriously after Jerome Kern’s (1885-1945) Show Boat, words by Oscar Hammerstein, tackled issues of racial segregation and the ban on interracial marriage in Mississippi.

1922

Alan Berg (1885-1935) composed the first completely atonal opera, Wozzeck, dealing with uncomfortable themes of militarism and social exploitation. Wozzeck is in the style of 12-tone music, or serialism. This new compositional style, developed in Vienna by composer Arnold Schoenberg (18741951), placed equal importance on each of the 12 pitches in a chromatic scale (all half steps), removing the sense of the music being in a particular key.

Mikado theatre poster, Edinburgh, 1885 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A scene from a 19th-century version of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre Beaumarchais. Its origins in the commedia dell’arte are shown in this picture which portrays Figaro dressed in the costume and mask of Harlequin. 1884 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Scott Joplin. Public Domain.

Porgy and Bess by the New York Harlem Theatre 2009. Courtesy of New York Harlem Theatre

1987

1945 British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) gained international recognition with his opera Peter Grimes. Britten, along with Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), was one of the first British opera composers to gain fame in nearly 300 years.

20TH CENTURY

1935 American composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), who was influenced by African American music and culture, debuted his opera, Porgy and Bess, in Boston, MA with an allAfrican American cast of classically trained singers. His contemporary, William Grant Still (1895-1978), a master of European grand opera, fused that with the African American experience and mythology. His first opera, Blue Steel, premiered in 1934, one year before Porgy and Bess.

1957

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), known for synthesizing musical genres, brought together the best of American musical theater, opera, and ballet in West Side Story—a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet in a contemporary setting.

John Adams (b. 1947) composed one of the great minimalist operas, Nixon in China, the story of Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Musical minimalism strips music down to its essential elements, usually featuring a great deal of repetition with slight variations.

1986

Anthony Davis (b. 1951) premiered his first of many operas, X, The Life and Time of Malcom X, which reclaims stories of Black historical figures within the theater space. He incorporated both the orchestral and vocal techniques of jazz and classical European opera in his score for a distinctly American sound, and a fully realized vision of how jazz and opera are in conversation within a work.

Today

Still a vibrant, evolving art form, opera attracts contemporary composers such as Philip Glass (b. 1937), Jake Heggie (b. 1961), Terence Blanchard (b. 1962), Ellen Reid (b. 1983), and many others. Composers continue to be influenced by present and historical musical forms in creating new operas that explore current issues or reimagine ancient tales.

Terence Blanchard. Six-time Grammy award-winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard. Creativity Commons

Photograph of William Grant Still taken by Carl Van Vechten Creativity Commons

Leonard Bernstein via Creative Commons

Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary composer Ellen Reid. Photo courtesy of Ellen Reid

THE SCIENCE AND ART OF OPERA

WHY DO OPERA SINGERS SOUND LIKE THAT?

Opera is unique among forms of singing in that singers are trained to be able to sing without amplification, in large theaters, over an entire orchestra, and still be heard and understood! This is what sets the art form of opera apart from similar forms such as musical theater. To become a professional opera singer, it takes years of intense physical training and constant practice — not unlike that of a ballet dancer — to stay in shape. Poor health, especially respiratory issues and even allergies, can be severely debilitating for a professional opera singer. Let’s peek into some of the science of this art form.

So Young Park as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Photo: Eric Antoniou

How the Voice Works

Singing requires different parts of the body to work together: the lungs, the vocal cords, the vocal tract, and the articulators (lips, teeth, and tongue). The lungs create a flow of air over the vocal cords, which vibrate. That vibration is amplified by the vocal tract and broken up into words by consonants, which are shaped by the articulators.

BREATH:

Any good singer will tell you that good breath support is essential to produce quality sound. Breath is like the gas that goes into your car. Without it, nothing runs. In order to sing long phrases of music with clarity and volume, opera singers access their full lung capacity by keeping their torso elongated and releasing the lower abdomen and diaphragm muscles, which allows air to enter into the lower lobes of the lungs. This is why we associate a certain posture with opera singers. In the past, many operas were staged with singers standing in one place to deliver an entire aria or scene, with minimal activity. Modern productions, however, often demand a much greater range of movement and agility onstage, requiring performers to be physically versatile, and bringing more visual interest, authenticity of expression, and nuanced acting into the storytelling.

VIBRATION:

If you run your fingers along your throat, you will feel a little lump just underneath your chin. That is your “Adam’s Apple,” and right behind it, housed in the larynx (voice-box), are your vocal cords. When air from the lungs crosses over the vocal cords it creates an area of low pressure (Google The Bernoulli Effect), which brings the cords together and makes them vibrate. This vibration produces a buzz. The vocal chords can be lengthened or shortened by muscles in the larynx, or by changing the speed of air flow. This change in the length and thickness of the vocal cords is what allows singers to create different pitches. Higher pitches require long, thin cords, while low pitches require short, thick ones. Professional singers take great pains to protect the delicate anatomy of their vocal cords with hydration and rest, as the tiniest scarring or inflammation can have noticeable effects on the quality of sound produced.

RESONANCE: ARTICULATION:

Without the resonating chambers in the head, the buzzing of the vocal cords would sound very unpleasant. The vocal tract, a term encompassing the mouth cavity, and the back of the throat, down to the larynx, shapes the buzzing of the vocal cords like a sculptor shapes clay. Shape your mouth in an ee vowel (as in eat), then sharply inhale a few times. The cool sensation you feel at the top and back of your mouth is your soft palate. The soft palate can raise or lower to change the shape of the vocal tract. Opera singers often sing with a raised soft palate, which allows for the greatest amplification of the sound produced by the vocal cords. Different vowel sounds are produced by raising or lowering the tongue, and changing the shape of the lips. Say the vowels: ee, eh, ah, oh, oo and notice how each vowel requires a slightly slower tongue placement and slightly rounder lips. This area of vocal training is particularly difficult because none of the anatomy is visible from the outside!

The lips, teeth, and tongue are all used to create consonant sounds, which separate words into syllables and make language intelligible. Consonants must be clear and audible for the singer to be understood. Because opera singers do not sing with amplification, their articulation must be particularly good. The challenge lies in producing crisp, rapid consonants without interrupting the connection of the vowels (through the controlled exhale of breath) within the musical phrase.

Perfecting every element of this complex singing system requires years of training and is essential for the demands of the art form. An opera singer must be capable of singing for hours at a time, over the powerful volume of an orchestra, in large opera houses, while acting and delivering an artistic interpretation of the music. It is complete and total engagement of mental, physical, and emotional control and expression. Therefore, think of opera singers as the Olympic athletes of the stage, sit back, and marvel at what the human body is capable of!

Different Voice Types

Opera singers are cast into roles based on their tessitura (the range of notes they can sing comfortably). There are many descriptors that accompany the basic voice types, but here are some of the most common ones:

Bass:

The lowest voice, basses often fall into two main categories: basso buffo, which is a comic character who often sings in lower laughing-like tones, and basso profundo, which is as low as the human voice can sing! Doctor Bartolo is an example of a bass role in The Barber of Seville by Rossini.

Baritone:

A middle-range lower voice, baritones can range from sweet and mild in tone, to darker dramatic and full tones. A famous baritone role is Rigoletto in Verdi’s Rigoletto. Baritones who are most comfortable in a slightly lower range are known as Bass-Baritones, a hybrid of the two lowest voice types.

Tenor:

The highest of the lower range voices; tenors often sing the role of the hero. One of the most famous tenor roles is Roméo in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliet. Occasionally men have cultivated very high voices singing in a range similar to a mezzosoprano but using their falsetto. Called the Countertenor, this voice type is often found in Baroque music. Countertenors replaced castrati in the heroic lead roles of baroque opera after the practice of castration was deemed unethical.

Bass

Baritone

Contralto

Mezzo-Soprano

Soprano Tenor

Each of the voice types (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass) also tends to be sub-characterized by whether it is more Lyric or Dramatic in tone. Lyric singers tend toward smooth lines in their music, sensitively expressed interpretation, and flexible agility. Dramatic singers have qualities that are attributed to darker, fuller, richer note qualities expressed powerfully and robustly with strong emotion. While its easiest to understand operatic voice types through these designations and descriptions, one of the most exciting things about listening to a singer perform is that each individual’s voice is essentially unique, thus each singer will interpret a role in an opera in a slightly different way.

Soprano:

Contralto:

The lowest of the higher treble voices have an even lower range that overlaps with the highest tenor’s range. This voice type is less common.

Mezzo-Soprano:

Somewhat equivalent to an alto role in a chorus, mezzo-sopranos (mezzo translated as “middle”) are known for their full and expressive qualities. While they don’t sing frequencies quite as high as sopranos, their ranges do overlap, and it is a “darker” tone that sets them apart. One of the most famous mezzosoprano lead roles is Carmen in Bizet’s Carmen.

The highest voice. Some subtypes of the soprano voice include coloratura, lyric, and dramatic sopranos. Coloratura sopranos specialize in being able to sing very fast-moving notes that are very high in frequency and light in tone, often referred to as “color notes.” One of the most famous coloratura roles is The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute

The Physics of Opera Singers

What is it about opera singers that allows them to be heard above the orchestra? It’s not that they simply singing louder. The qualities of sound have to do with the relationship between the frequency (pitch) of a sound, represented in a unit of measurement called hertz, and its amplitude, measured in decibels, which the ear perceives as loudness. Only artificially produced sounds, however, create a pure frequency and amplitude (these are the only kind that can break glass). The sound produced by a violin, a drum, a voice, or even smacking your hand on a table, produces a fundamental frequency as well as secondary, tertiary, etc. frequencies known as overtones, or as musicians call them, harmonics

The orchestra tunes to a concert “A” pitch before a performance. Concert “A” has a frequency of about 440 hertz, but that is not the only pitch you will hear. Progressively softer pitches above that fundamental pitch are produced in multiples of 440 at 880hz, 1320hz, 1760hz, etc. Each different instrument in the orchestra, because of its shape, construction, and mode in which it produces sound, produces different harmonics. This is what makes a violin, for example, have a different color (or timbre) from a trumpet. Generally, the harmonics of the instruments in the orchestra fade around 2500hz. Overtones produced by a human voice—whether speaking, yelling, or singing— are referred to as formants

As the demands of opera stars increased, vocal teachers discovered that by manipulating the empty space within the vocal tract, they could emphasize higher frequencies within the overtone series—frequencies above 2500hz. This technique allowed singers to perform without hurting their vocal cords, as they are not actually singing at a higher fundamental decibel level than the orchestra. Swedish voice scientist Johan Sundberg observed this phenomenon when he recorded the world-famous tenor Jussi Bjoerling in 1970. His research showed multiple peaks in decibel level, with the strongest frequency (overtone) falling between 2500 and 3000 hertz. This frequency, known as the singer’s formant , is the “sweet spot” for singers so that we hear their voices soaring over the orchestra into the opera house night after night.

Prof. Tecumseh Fitch, evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Vienna, explains the difference between a fundamental frequency and formant frequency in the human voice. For an opera singer, the lower two formants (peaks on a graph) determine the specific vowel sound. The third formant and above add overtones that are specific to each particular singer’s voice, like a fingerprint. When two people sing the same note simultaneously, the high overtones allow your ear to distinguish two voices.

A Resonant Place

The final piece of the puzzle in creating the perfect operatic sound is the opera house or theater itself. Designing the perfect acoustical space can be an almost impossible task, one which requires tremendous knowledge of science, engineering, and architecture, as well as an artistic sensibility. The goal of the acoustician is to make sure that everyone in the audience can clearly understand the music being produced onstage, no matter where they are sitting. A perfectly designed opera house or concert hall (for non-amplified sound) functions almost like gigantic musical instrument.

Reverberation is one key aspect in making a singer’s words intelligible or an orchestra’s melodies clear. Imagine the sound your voice would make in the shower or a cave. The echo you hear is reverberation caused by the large, hard, smooth surfaces. Too much reverberation (bouncing sound waves) can make words difficult to understand. Resonant vowel sounds overlap as they bounce off hard surfaces and cover up quieter consonant sounds. In these environments, sound carries a long way but becomes unclear or, as it is sometimes called, wet, as if the sound were underwater. Acousticians can mitigate these effects by covering smooth surfaces with textured materials like fabric, perforated metal, or diffusers, which absorb and disperse sound. These tools, however, must be used carefully, as too much absorption can make a space dry – meaning the sound onstage will not carry at all and the performers may have trouble even hearing themselves as they perform. Imagine singing into a pillow or under a blanket.

The shape of the room itself also contributes to the way the audience perceives the music. Most large performance spaces are shaped like a bell – small where the stage is and growing larger and more spread out in every dimension as one moves farther away. This shape helps to create a clear path for the sound to every seat. In designing concert halls or opera houses, big decisions must be made about the construction of the building based on acoustical needs. Even with the best planning, the perfect acoustic is not guaranteed, but professionals are constantly learning and adapting new scientific knowledge to enhance the audience’s experience.

Boston Symphony Hall, opened in 1900, with acoustical design by Harvard physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, was the first concert hall to be designed with scientific acoustic principles in mind. Each seat was mathematically designed and placed for maximum acoustical perfection.

Boston Opera House, Photo by John Wolf

NOTES TO PREPARE FOR THE OPERA

You will see a full dress rehearsal – an insider’s look into the final moments of preparation before an opera premieres. The singers will be in full costume and makeup, the opera will be fully staged, and an orchestra will accompany the singers, who may choose to “mark,” or not sing in full voice, to save their voices for the performances. A final dress rehearsal is often a complete run-through, but there is a chance the director or conductor will ask to repeat a scene or section of music. This is the last opportunity the performers have to rehearse with the orchestra before opening night, and they therefore need this valuable time to work. The following will help you better enjoy your experience of a night at the opera:

THE PERFORMANCE:

• Arrive on time! Latecomers will be seated only at suitable breaks in the performance and often not until intermission.

• Dress in what you are comfortable in so that you may enjoy the performance. For some, that may mean dressing up in a suit or gown, for others, jeans and a t-shirt is fine. Generally “dressy-casual” is what people wear. Live theater is usually a little more formal than a movie theater.

• At the very beginning of the opera, the concertmaster of the orchestra will ask the oboist to play the note “A.” You will hear all the other musicians in the orchestra tune their instruments to match the oboe’s “A.”

• After all the instruments are tuned, the conductor will arrive. You can applaud to welcome them!

• Feel free to applaud or shout “Bravo!” at the end of an aria or chorus piece if you really liked it. The end of a piece can be identified by a pause in the music. Singers love an appreciative audience!

• It’s OK to laugh when something is funny or gasp at something shocking!

• When translating songs, and poetry in particular, much can be lost due to a change in rhythm, inflection, and rhyme of words. For this reason, opera is usually performed in its original language. In order to help audiences enjoy the music and follow every twist and turn of the plot, English supertitles are projected. Even when the opera is in English, there are still supertitles.

• Listen for subtleties in the music. The tempo, volume, and complexity of the music and singing depict the feelings or actions of the characters. Also, notice repeated words or phrases; they are usually significant.

OPERA

THE PERFORMERS:

The singers, orchestra, dancers, and stage crew are all hard at work to create an amazing performance for you! Here’s how you can help them.

• Lit screens are very distracting to the singers, so please keep your phone out of sight and off until the house lights come up.

• Due to how distracting electronics can be for performers, taking photos or making audio or video recordings is strictly forbidden.

EACH OTHER:

• The theater is a shared space, so please be courteous to your neighbors!

• Please do not take off your shoes or put your feet on the seat in front of you.

• Respect your fellow opera lovers by not leaning forward in your seat so as to block the person’s view behind you.

• Do not chew gum, eat, or drink while the rehearsal is in session. Not only can it pull focus from the performance, but the ushers are not there to clean up after you.

• If you must visit the restroom during the performance, please exit quickly and quietly.

Otherwise, sit back, relax, and let the action onstage pull you in. As an audience member, you are essential to the art form of opera — without you, there is no show!

Have Fun and Enjoy the Opera!