Inaugural Musicology Colloquium with Dr. Kunio Hara “Transpacific Madama Butterfly: Reframing and Refashioning Giacomo Puccini’s Japanese Tragedy, 1941–2026”

Inaugural Musicology Colloquium with Dr. Kunio Hara “Transpacific Madama Butterfly: Reframing and Refashioning Giacomo Puccini’s Japanese Tragedy, 1941–2026”

Guest Speaker Dr. Kunio Hara, Associate Professor of Music History at the University of South Carolina

In the wake of the sharp rise in anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly has once again attracted scrutiny for its negative impact on the lives of people of various East Asian ancestry. In response to this crisis, a cohort of Asian American musicians, directors, and advocates have organized public events to discuss and to reimagine the opera in ways that reflect their concerns as artists and citizens. As a scholar of Puccini’s opera with a Japanese background who have written on the contributions that Japanese musicians have made in the creation and dissemination of Madama Butterfly, I was invited to participate in several of these events. These occasions proved to be valuable opportunities to engage in in-depth conversations with Asian and Asian American artists. During these interactions, however, it became clear that the awareness about historic examples of Asian and Asian American interventions to staging the opera is relatively hidden, even among dedicated groups of musicians, suggesting a significant lacuna in the literature of Madama Butterfly. Indeed, existing musicological critiques of the opera by Susan McClary (2006), Ralph Locke (2009), Anthony Sheppard (2019), and others have helped us understand the insidious cultural work of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. However, they often overlook the contributions that performers, creative artists, and audience members of Asian descent have made in refining, promoting, and, at times, resisting Madama Butterfly.

My current research project, tentatively titled “Transpacific Madama Butterfly,” sets out to fill this gap in knowledge about the performance and reception history of the opera by focusing on the activities of individuals of Asian descent. In adopting the analytical framework of the “transpacific” promoted by scholars within the field of Asian American Studies such as Janet Hoskins and Tuong Thanh Nguyen (2016), and Yunte Huang (2008), I aim to illustrate the flow of ideas, cultural practices, objects, and people that constitute the history of the opera. The scope and aim of the project complement the body of scholarship by Arthur Groos (2023) that examines the early reception of the opera in Japan through the mid-twentieth century as well as works by Mari Yoshihara (2007) that historically contextualizes the participation of East Asian musicians in the artistic realm of Western classical music. For the presentation, I propose to examine a handful of historic as well as current productions, ranging from Yoshio Aoyama’s 1958 Metropolitan production to Phil Chan and Nina Yoshida Nelsen’s 2023 Boston Lyric Opera production, putting them into conversation with each other to discern any recurring patterns as well as to trace the development in the critical discourse surrounding the work. Ultimately, I wish to expand the ongoing scholarly discourse on Puccini’s Madama Butterfly by reframing it around the lived experiences of the people of Asian descent and to equip current and future practicing musicians and advocates with historical knowledge that could inform their critical engagements with the opera.