September, 2023 | Boston Lyric Opera

6 09, 2023

From the Director | Sept. 2023

By Jeanna Heezen|2023-09-06T11:11:33-04:00September 6th, 2023|

Welcome to Boston Lyric Opera’s 47th Season! On behalf of all of us at Boston Lyric Opera, I extend a hearty welcome to the beginning of our 2023/24 season. This season, we embark on a journey of love – exploring the idea “All I have, I give for love.” This quote comes from our closing opera of the season, Eurydice, a new work by Boston-born composer Matthew Aucoin, based on the famous play by Sara Ruhl, and has become a theme that has resonated as we prepare these productions for the stage. Each story this season asks the question, [...]

Re-orienting Madama Butterfly: From the “white gaze” to inclusive opera

By BLO Staff|2023-09-05T09:24:28-04:00September 1st, 2023|

About twenty years ago, I attended a production of Madama Butterfly at San Francisco Opera. Even now, I recall the state of cognitive dissonance I experienced as an audience member. I wanted to immerse myself in the voices of the opera singers and in the visually stunning set design, but couldn’t shake my discomfort with the representation of the Japanese characters. As one of the only Asian audience members, I felt self-conscious and complicit with the racial stereotyping I witnessed. Madama Butterfly is the sixth most performed opera in the world and has occupied a position of privilege within [...]

Cio-Cio-San at War: Madama Butterfly, World War II, and the Japanese American Experience

By BLO Staff|2023-09-05T09:23:39-04:00September 1st, 2023|

On December 2, 1944, a newspaper from Cody, Wyoming published a small notice about a performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Brooklyn Academy of Music the previous week. Oddly, the unsigned article does not contain any description of the performance itself. Instead, it dwells on the decision of the company’s director, Alfredo Salmaggi, to mount the opera, which had not been performed in New York City since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The article reports that Salmaggi had received “several letters of protests from relatives of service men” but also reminds that he [...]