100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (36 page)

Time: about 1900

Place: Nagasaki

First performance at Milan, February 17, 1904

    Three of the most popular Italian operas in the repertoire—
The Barber of Seville, La traviata
, and
Madama Butterfly
—were resounding failures on their opening nights, and of those three failures
Butterfly’s
was perhaps the most resounding of all. Everyone, from the composer and cast down to the orchestra players and the stagehands, had confidently expected nothing but another triumph for the composer of
Manon Lescaut, La Bohème
, and
Tosca
. Yet even the glorious entry
music of Butterfly (sung by the great Rosina Storchio) was greeted with silence—and silence from an Italian audience is an ominous thing at best. Later in the first act there were cries of “That’s from
Bohème
 … Give us something new!” Hisses greeted the first-act curtain; and when, near the beginning of the second act, a breeze billowed up Storchio’s gown, someone cried out: “Butterfly is pregnant!” From then on it was a long series of catcalls, moos, cock-a-doodle-doos, and obscenities. And the reviews, on the whole, were not much more polite.

Puccini, bewildered and heartbroken, canceled the other scheduled performances at La Scala though it meant the payment of a considerable sum, took back his score, and made a number of revisions, the chief of them being to divide the long second act into what we now hear as Acts II and III. Three and a half months later the revised version was mounted in Brescia under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.

Now the opera was a huge success. In the first act the audience applauded the scenery and demanded an encore for Pinkerton’s little aria as well as of the entire love duet. Four more numbers had to be repeated later on, and after each of them, in the quaint Italian fashion, the composer came on the stage to take a bow along with the singers. “Never again,” to quote George Marek, Puccini’s finest biographer, “did
Butterfly
fail. No other first performance proved short of a triumph.”

Why the first failure and then the triumph? It cannot be explained, as with
La traviata
, by an inadequate first cast:
Butterfly’s
was absolutely first-class. Maybe, as has been surmised, the violence was inspired by the composer’s ill-wishers, as was possibly the case with
The Barber
. I rather think, however, it can best be attributed to the nature of Italian opera audiences, who love nothing better than to express their opinions unmistakably, whether right or wrong.

ACT I

At the turn of the century—about forty-five years before an atom bomb destroyed it—the harbor town of Nagasaki was a
very pretty place. On the outskirts of the town, and overlooking the harbor, is a pretty Japanese villa. In the garden, when the opera begins, there are a Japanese busybody and an American naval officer. The busybody is Goro, the marriage broker; the officer is Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, U.S.N. Goro has arranged a marriage for the Lieutenant, and he shows him over the house that has been rented for 999 years (with, of course, a convenient cancellation clause). The marriage contract, by the way, has the same convenient clause—cancelable at a month’s notice.

When the United States Consul, Sharpless, calls, he tries to persuade Pinkerton that there is danger in this arrangement, for Sharpless knows the prospective bride, her name being Cio-Cio-San, or Madam Butterfly, and he fears that the probable result will break her tender heart someday. But Pinkerton cannot be made to take anything seriously, and he even proposes a toast to the day when he will be
really
married—in the United States.

And now it is practically time for the wedding ceremony. Butterfly, accompanied by her relatives, makes her entrance as her voice soars above the close harmony of her female companions. She tells Pinkerton about herself and her family and her age—which is only fifteen—and she shows him various trinkets she carries in her large Japanese sleeve, including a dagger her father had used to commit suicide on the order of the Mikado. The general tone of the meeting, however, is very gay. The Imperial Commissioner performs the brief legal ceremony, and everyone sings a toast to the happy pair when, suddenly, an ominous figure interrupts. He is Butterfly’s uncle, the Bonze, a Japanese priest, who has learned that Butterfly has renounced her traditional religion in favor of Christianity and has come to cast her out. All the relatives side with the Bonze, and they turn on the young bride. But Pinkerton orders them all away; and in the long and wonderful love duet that closes the act, Butterfly forgets her troubles. Together, Lieutenant and Madam Pinkerton enter their new home.

ACT II

Three years have passed quietly in Butterfly’s house, but Lieutenant Pinkerton has not been heard from. Suzuki, who has been praying to her Japanese gods, tries to tell her mistress that he never will come again. At first Madam Butterfly is angry, but then she sings her famous ecstatic aria
Un bel dì
, describing in detail how one fine day he will sail into the harbor, come up the hill, and again meet his beloved wife.

Soon there is an embarrassed visitor—Sharpless, the American Consul. He has a letter he wishes to read, but Butterfly makes such a hospitable fuss over him that he cannot get going. They are interrupted by the marriage broker, Goro, bringing with him the noble Prince Yamadori, who wishes to marry Butterfly. The lady politely but firmly refuses the Prince, whereupon Sharpless again tries to read the letter. Actually it tells of Pinkerton’s marriage to an American girl, but the Consul does not have the heart to break the news—and so only a portion of the letter is read aloud in the
Letter Duet
. Instead, he asks what Butterfly would do if Pinkerton never returned. For a moment she thinks that suicide would be the only answer. Gently Sharpless advises her to accept the Prince. That is impossible, she insists—and she brings in the reason for the impossibility. It is her young son, named Trouble. But, she adds, he will be called Joy when his father returns. Utterly defeated, Sharpless leaves.

And now a cannon is heard from the harbor. An American ship—Pinkerton’s ship, the
Abraham Lincoln
—has arrived! With joy Butterfly and Suzuki decorate the house as they sing their lovely
Flower Duet
Then they prepare to await the arrival of the master. Through holes in the screen, Butterfly, Suzuki, and Trouble prepare to watch the harbor throughout the night. A beautiful melody (used earlier in the
Letter Duet)
is played and hummed by an off-stage chorus, and the act quietly closes.

ACT III

The beginning of the last act finds Suzuki, Butterfly, and Trouble just where they were at the close of the second, excepting that the child and the maid are now sound asleep. It is morning and there are noises from the harbor. Butterfly takes her sleeping little boy into another room, singing him a lullaby. Into the garden comes the Consul Sharpless, accompanied by Lieutenant Pinkerton and Kate Pinkerton, his American wife. Suzuki almost at once realizes who this is. She cannot bear to tell her mistress, and neither can Pinkerton. He sings a passionate farewell to his once-happy home, and leaves. But Butterfly, coming in now, sees Kate and realizes that inevitable tragedy has struck her. With dignity she tells Kate that she may have her boy if Pinkerton will come soon to fetch him.

Left alone with the child, she knows there is only one thing to do. First she blindfolds him; then she goes behind a screen; and with her father’s dagger she stabs herself. As she drags herself toward the boy, Pinkerton comes rushing back, crying, “Butterfly! Butterfly!” He is, of course, too late. He falls on his knees by her body as the orchestra thunders forth the fateful Asiatic melody heard before, each time that death has been mentioned.

THE MAGIC FLUTE

(Die Zauberflöte)

Opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
with libretto in German by Emanuel
Schikaneder, possibly with the help of Karl
Ludwig Gieseke

Time: unspecified but roughly about the reign of the Pharaoh
Ramses I

Place: Egypt

First performance at Vienna, September 30, 1791

    
The Magic Flute
is what the Germans call a
Singspiel
(a “sing play”)—that is, a play with a good deal of singing, like an operetta or a musical comedy or a ballad opera or even an
opéra comique
. Well, most operettas and musical comedies present certain absurdities and inconsistencies in their books,
and this one is no exception. For instance, the Queen of the Night seems to be a good woman in the first act and a villainess in the second. Again, the story starts out as a romantic fairy tale, pure and simple, and later takes on serious religious significance. In fact, the rites of the Temple of Isis and Osiris are generally regarded as being reflections of the ideals of the Masonic order, while various critics, writing long after the death of the authors, have found political symbolism of the most profound sort in Act II. There may be something in this if for no other reason than that both Mozart and his librettist were Masons, and Masonry was officially frowned on at the time.

Today such questions seem to matter very little. Far more important is the fact that Schikaneder, a swashbuckling, in-and-out actor-singer-writer-impresario commissioned the work from his old friend Mozart in the last year of the composer’s life, when he needed such a commission badly. Mozart wrote his glorious score with specific singers in mind—for example, Schikaneder himself, with a very limited baritone, did Papageno, while Josefa Hofer, Mozart’s sister-in-law, was the brilliantly pyrotechnical coloratura for whom the Queen of the Night’s arias were composed. Gieseke, who may have written parts of the libretto (he later claimed the whole of it), was a gifted man of science and letters and probably served as the model for Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister; but he possessed no great talent for the stage and was assigned the role of the first man in armor.

As for the inconsistencies in the plot, they may be accounted for by the fact that, while the libretto was being written, a rival theater put on a successful musical show called
Casper the Bassoonist, or the Magic Zither
, which was based on the very story Schikaneder was working on—
Lulu
, by one Liebeskind. It is conjectured that Schikaneder changed the whole plot in midstream, that is, after the first act and the beginning of the second were completed. This is a tidy theory, but the only evidence for it is circumstantial.

Despite the inconsistencies (and maybe even because of them!) the opera has always had the dream fascination of a
fairy tale, and it was a huge success from the beginning. That success did not help Mozart much. He died thirty-seven days after the premiere. As for Schikaneder, he was able, partly with the proceeds from the continued success of the opera, to build himself a brand-new theater seven years later and crown it with a statue of himself dressed in the feathers of Papageno. It was the high point of his career, and fourteen years after that he died as poor as Mozart, and insane.

OVERTURE

The overture begins solemnly, making use of three heavy chords which appear later at some of the most solemn moments connected with the rites of the temple. But, excepting for a later repetition of these chords, as a sort of reminder, the rest of the overture is just as light and gay, in its contrapuntal fashion, as the prelude to a fairy tale ought to be.

ACT I

Scene 1
The fairy tale itself begins—as a fairy tale should—with a handsome young prince lost in a valley. His name is Tamino, and he is being chased by a vicious serpent. He cries for help, sinks unconscious to the ground, and is promptly saved by three lovely ladies. These are ladies-in-waiting to the Queen of the Night—a supernatural personage, of cours&-and they vastly admire the handsome young man, who has fainted away. When they have gone, the leading comedian comes on the scene. He is Papageno, a birdcatcher by trade, and he introduces himself in a gay, folksy tune (
Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja
—“It’s a birdcatcher I am”). He says that he likes catching birds, but he’d rather catch a wife. He also plays a snatch of a tune on his pipes—one we shall hear more of later on.

Papageno informs Tamino that he is in the realm of the Queen of the Night, and he also takes credit for having killed the snake. For this lie the three ladies return and place a lock on the birdcatcher’s lips. Then they show Tamino the picture of a beautiful young girl. She is the Queen of the Night’s
daughter, who has been stolen and whom Tamino is to rescue. Tamino at once falls in love with the picture and sings the so-called
Portrait Aria
. Now the Queen of the Night appears, and in a dramatic and extremely difficult aria she tells Tamino about her daughter and promises him her hand in marriage when he rescues her. The first scene then ends with a quintet, a beautifully sustained lyric-dramatic composition quite in a class with the wonderful finales of
The Marriage of Figaro
though in an appropriately different style. During this finale the three ladies-in-waiting present Tamino with a magical flute that should make everyone who hears it happy, and they give the birdcatcher, Papageno, a set of musical bells. For Papageno is to accompany Tamino on his quest, and the bells will always protect him.