The Butterfly Process is part of BLO’s commitment to authentic storytelling with its artists and for its audiences that informs a new approach to presenting canonical operas today.
“The goal here is for everyone to participate in an art form that hasn’t traditionally been inclusive, and to strengthen our communities and audiences through the music and stories we present. I believe we can do it by engaging with and listening to people of many backgrounds and life experiences and incorporating that into our work.”
– Bradley Vernatter, “Saying Yes to Puccini, but No to His Stereotypes” – The New York Times
BLO is presenting our new production of Madama Butterfly Sept 14-24. Learn more here, and purchase tickets below.
ABOUT THE BUTTERFLY PROCESS
Spurred by a postponed production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly for Boston Lyric Opera’s 2020/21 Season BLO began conversations with Butterfly artists, staff, and community aiming to reexamine the history and legacy of this opera in light of ongoing uncertainty of returning to live performances during the ongoing pandemic alongside heightened racism toward Asian communities.
While Madama Butterfly is loved by audiences and remains an essential part of the traditional repertoire, the opera’s history has reputation for portraying inaccurate, harmful representations of Japanese culture, contributing to stereotypes of Asian and Asian-Americans. BLO engaged with artists, board members, community leaders, organizations, and preeminent scholars to discuss Madama Butterfly, particularly around the areas of cultural appropriation, race, and gender stereotypes—and the wide-ranging impact of this opera for Asian artists.
This became known as The Butterfly Process, BLO’s commitment to unpacking the layers of this story and the historical context of the work— and how to incorporate its legacy in a way that celebrates opera as a multicultural art form.
BLO hosted six public discussions throughout the 2021/22 Season, hosted and moderated by Phil Chan, co-founder and author of Final Bow for Yellowface, who also served as a partner in developing and facilitating this series. These discussions explore issues tied to the historical impact and current producing realities of Madama Butterfly. Though conversation with featured speakers and members of BLO’s previously planned Butterfly cast, Phil guides each conversation with to contextualize each theme and frame a community discussion. We invite you to explore these conversations below.
The Birth of Butterfly through WWII: The First 50 Years focuses on the essential questions to ground us in the work of Madama Butterfly, including the socio-political context during the time of its premiere and how that changed during and after World War II. Dr. Kunio Hara, a preeminent Puccini scholar is in diologue with Phil Chan and BLO artists to contextualize these themes to frame a community discussion.
Featured Speaker Kunio Hara
Orientalism & Cultural Appropriation focuses on learning and engaging with how Orientalism has influenced Western European Art and by extension, how Eurocentric art—and Madama Butterfly specifically—has defined, perpetuated, and reinforced particular and narrow attitudes about AAPI people and cultures
Featured Speakers Mari Yoshihara, Michael Sakamoto, Josephine Lee, Huang Ruo
The Impact on Artists & Audiences centers the experience of opera artists and explores the complex, sometimes conflicting relationship many have to Madama Butterfly, both as a gateway to opera and a work that has typecast many AAPI singers. Artists will explore ways in which opera productions can be more inclusive and multicultural. Phil Chan guides a conversation in a Town Hall format hosted by the Boston Public Library as part of their Racial Equity and Recovery Initiative.
Featured Speakers Melanie Bacaling, Eiji Miura, Todd McNeel Jr., Wynne Szeto
Symbolism & Archetypes of Women explores the cultural context of geisha in Japan as it relates to the character of Cio–Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, and how depictions of this character have perpetuated sexualized stereotypes of Asian and AAPI women in American culture.
Featured Speakers Teiya Kasahara, Yunah Lee, and Giselle Ty
The Casting the Roles discussion session unpacks the nuances within ongoing industry conversations about appropriate casting and performance practices. Constructive dialogue explores culturally sensitive, inclusive, and responsive practices that center the story being told, who is telling the story, and who makes up the audience.
Featured Speakers Priti Gandhi, David Henry Hwang, Benjamin Makino, Douglas Sumi
Learning & Sharing we share with our community and the industry what we learned and where we are going from here—both specifically for the opera Madama Butterfly and more broadly, outlining action and steps BLO is taking to become a multiracial opera company. Phil Chan will lead the conversation with BLO leaders, leadership from New Orleans Opera, a partner in this discussion series, and artists to reflect and respond to this process. This wrap-up be live streamed from Boston Lyric Opera’s space at the Midway Artist Studios in Fort Point and the audience will be able to attend virtually.
With Jessica Johnson Brock, Clare Burovac, Anne M. Morgan, Nina Yoshida Nelson, and Bradley Vernatter
Re-orienting Madama Butterfly: From the “white gaze” to inclusive opera
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
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 [...]
The Geisha in the Mirror: The Impact of Symbols and Archetypes
Since the dawn of time, theatrical creatives have coaxed audiences out of reality and into fantastic worlds with gripping stories through the magic of stagecraft. In order to help the audience suspend their disbelief and get caught up in a story, theater-makers use symbols that represent the real world. A symbol is something that stands in for something else in the real world. A symbol can be a flag that represents a nation, or a stoplight that is a stand-in for commands, or a dove that represents peace. On stage, a costume is a great symbol that helps give you [...]
Resonant Voices: An Interview with Cerise Lim Jacobs
Opera creatives face the perennial challenge of pushing the art form forward and making it resonate with new audiences. Companies can approach this challenge using three different strategies. The first and most common strategy is to present European canonic operas but change the original setting. This challenges the original form and simultaneously brings new truths inherent in the work that might be more relevant to a contemporary audience. Examples include Calixto Bieito’s Carmen set in late 1970s Spain and the Metropolitan Opera’s recent Rigoletto, set in 1940s Las Vegas. Shakespeare’s plays, written over 400 years ago, are often set in [...]
Voicing Quietness: Madama Butterfly and the Perception of East Asian Women
“We keep our heads down and work hard, believing that our diligence will reward us with our dignity, but our diligence will only make us disappear. By not speaking up, we perpetuate the myth that our shame is caused by our repressive culture and the country we fled, whereas America has given us nothing but opportunity.” -Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning In a sound world dominated by high Cs and virtuosic coloratura runs, qualities such as volume, presence, and dimensionality are prized in a voice. The entrance of the leading lady of the opera is applauded; [...]
For the Community: The Perspectives of Artists and Audience
How many variations of the fairytale, Cinderella , can you name? There’s Rhodopis from ancient Greece, Ye Xian from ancient China, Perrault’s Cendrillon and Walt Disney’s Cinderella , to name a few . This familiar rags-to-riches story has inspired each generation to find a new “twist” in the story to make it resonate with their local audience. With its multicultural history, it’s easy to continue to adapt a story like Cinderella, which has undergone many variations over time, yet somehow still manages to hold its plot and structure. However, it is a much greater challenge to reimagine a work, like [...]
Diving Deeper: A Dialogue about Orientalism
In our previous Butterfly Process session with Dr. Kunio Hara, we gained insightful historical context about the genesis of Madama Butterfly, as well as tracing its performance history through the evolving social and geopolitical conditions to the present day. This second session unpacked Orientalism and Cultural Appropriation which are two very significant topics that play a heavy hand in understanding the dynamics at play with why Madama Butterfly can often be problematic. To tackle the conversation from multiple perspectives, BLO invited a panel of academics, artists, and presenters to show historical and scholarly context alongside real feedback from creatives in [...]
Contextualizing Butterfly
Contextualizing Butterfly Welcome to The Butterfly Process blog! My name is Phil Chan, I am the cofounder of Final Bow for Yellowface and since 2017, we have been working to improve how to represent Asians on the stage (yes, we are the folks who de-yellowfaced The Nutcracker). Though my work has primarily been ballet, I am a self-professed opera queen. So, I was intrigued when BLO invited me to lead a year-long conversation around the issues raised when producing Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, a work I love but have always been slightly uncomfortable with. As my creative practice consists [...]
Amplified Opera’s The Butterfly Project
Amplified Opera, in partnership with Confluence Concerts, recently hosted on online symposium tackling the issues Madama Butterfly presents. For further conversations around these issues, be sure to watch the symposium.
Our Story: Cultural Legacies of Japanese Incarceration
Join Japanese American artists, scholars, and advocates for a discussion about the lasting cultural legacy of the United States’ forced mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Watch Now.
Puccini’s Use of Japanese Melodies in Madama Butterfly (M.M. thesis, University of Cincinnati)
Classical Opera Has a Racism Problem (The New York Times)
Hollywood Movies Continue To Perpetuate Harmful Asian Stereotypes (The Huffington Post)
Close the Curtain on ‘Miss Saigon’ (The New York Times)
The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sllivan’s Mikado (University of Minnesota Press)
Yellowface Performance: Historical and Contemporary Contexts (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature)
The Great ‘West Side Story’ Debate (The New York Times)
The Butterfly Project: The Ballad of Chō-Chō San (Amplified Opera)
Unpacking the Model Minority Myth: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mikado? (Intermountain Opera Bozeman and the Bozeman Public Library)
Microaggressions: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mikado? (Intermountain Opera Bozeman and the Bozeman Public Library)
ASIA Panel: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mikado? (Intermountain Opera Bozeman and the Bozeman Public Library)
AOA Panel: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mikado? (Intermountain Opera Bozeman and the Bozeman Public Library)
How do theaters entice new audiences with Shakespeare? There’s the rub. (The Washington Post)
JUST ANOTHER DUMB ASIAN SINGER (Nicholas Phan, blog post)
Decolonizing the Music Room (Decolonizing the Music Room)
The Visibility Report (AAPAC)
Anti-Asian Discrimination at American Orchestras (Americanorchestras.org)
Asians Are Represented in Classical Music. But Are They Seen? (The New York Times)
Ornamentalism (Limelight)
Ornamentalism (Oxford University Press)
The Page Law of 1875 (Immigration History)
‘Grappling with Madama Butterfly Today: Representation, Reclamation, Re-imagination (Amplified Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Confluence Concerts)
The Butterfly Project: The Ballad of Chō-Chō San (Confluence Concerts)
The Composer Huang Ruo on Illusion and Betrayal in ‘M. Butterfly’ (The New York Times)
Phil Chan is the co-founder of 
Priti Gandhi joined Portland Opera in the fall of 2021 as an artistic and strategic leader, as part of a new collaborative leadership team structure for the company. Her role leads the discussions for season planning, casting, developing the young artist program, and oversight of the company’s community engagement and educational programs.
Kunio Hara is an associate professor of music history at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include Puccini’s operas, exoticism and Orientalism in music, nostalgia, and music in postwar Japan. Dr. Hara has presented papers at various national and international musicological and interdisciplinary conferences including the meetings of the American Musicological Society, The Society for American Music, Transnational Opera Studies Conference, and Music and the Moving Image Conference. His published works include articles “‘Per noi emigrati’: Nostalgia in the Reception of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West in New York City’s Italian-Language Newspapers” in the Journal of the Society for American Music; “The Death of Tamaki Miura: Performing Madama Butterfly During the Allied Occupation of Japan” in Music and Politics, “1 + 1 = 1: Measuring Time’s Distance in Tōru Takemitsu’s Nostalghia: In Memory of Andrei Tarkovskij” in Music and the Moving Image, “Rudolf Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu and Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly” in Music Research Forum, and “The Structure of Nostalgia in Puccini’s Operas” in Between Nostalgia, Utopia, and Realities. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Joe Hisaishi’s Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro as part of the Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 Japan Series. Dr. Hara holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and M.M. and B.M. degrees in music history and clarinet performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Conductor Benjamin Makino has been recognized for his nuanced and thoughtful interpretations of broad and varied repertoire.
These artists, originally cast in BLO’s planned production for the 2020/21 Season, are engaged throughout and are featured in B. the artistic product of The Butterfly Process.
Mezzo soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen makes her Boston Lyric Opera debut as Mama Lucia in Cavalleria rusticana, adding to an impressive lineup of performances scheduled for the 2021-2022 season, including her Bard Opera debut singing Mother Chen in Huang Ruo’s An American Soldier, a return to Opera Santa Barbara for a double bill of El Amor Brujo and Frugola in Il Tabarro, a Chicago Opera Theater debut singing Queen Queen Sophine in Mark Adamo’s Becoming Santa Claus, Mama in Jack Perla’s An American Dream at Kentucky Opera (a role she debuted in 2019 at Lyric Opera Chicago), and the Alto Solo in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Rhode Island Philharmonic. Ms. Nelsen has performed two world premieres at Houston Grand Opera, and premiered Jack Perla’s An American Dream at Seattle Opera. Equally comfortable on the symphonic stage, she has performed with notable orchestras around the world, and made her European debut singing Suzuki in Madama Butterfly at Royal Albert Hall in London. A Santa Barbara native, Ms. Nelsen resides with her husband Jeff and their two sons in Bloomington, Indiana.
Read All About It!: “Saying Yes to Puccini, but No to His Stereotypes” – The New York Times
Press Release 11/17/21: WITH “THE BUTTERFLY PROCESS,” BLO EXPLORES A NEW WAY TO APPROACH THE OPERATIC CANON (PDF 297KB)
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Artwork created by KUDOS Design Collaboratory.