Aria Code

“Un bel dì vedremo” 

 from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

with Ana María Martínez

[Theme music]

STANLEY: Puccini's Madame Butterfly is ultimately a kind of a psychosexual fantasy about the nature of, not just Asian women, but also Asia itself.

GIDDENS: From WQXR and the Metropolitan Opera, this is Aria Code. I'm Rhiannon Giddens.

MARTÍNEZ: I think that hope is one of the greatest lifelines that we have. 

GIDDENS: Every episode, we pull back the curtain on a single aria so we can see what's behind the scenes.

RUO: That excitement, that desire, that bittersweetness...

GIDDENS: Today, it's "Un bel dì vedremo" from Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

KATAYAMA: What agency did my mother have? What agency did Butterfly have? You know, there were not really options.

GIDDENS: The story of Madame Butterfly has always reminded me of something that my mom used to say when I was young. She would say that illusion is harder to let go of than reality. I definitely find that in my life, from relationships to my career -- what I think I should be doing with it. It's really easy to build these ideas about what something is, or who someone is, and to put all of our faith into that illusion.

That's what today's aria, "Un bel dì," is all about. 

Cio-Cio-San, also known as Butterfly, is a young Japanese girl. She became a geisha to support her family, but an American navy lieutenant named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton who's stationed in Nagasaki bought her as his bride. (Yes, I said, "bought." These were different times, and women were still commodities.) 

Anyway, Cio-Cio-San falls head over heels in love with him, and they make… ahem… beautiful music together. And also...well, a baby boy.

And then, Pinkerton takes off. 

Three years pass, and she waits for him. Totally faithful. Her maid Suzuki is telling her to let it go, like, the guy's not coming back! But Butterfly's clinging to the illusion of this life that they could have together. 

And that's where today's hopeful and heartbreaking aria comes in. 

In "Un bel dì," Cio-Cio-San is imagining the day she's going to see his ship on the horizon and know that he's coming back for her... this one beautiful day.

Now, I probably don't have to tell you how this all works out (or actually doesn't, in her case), but I've invited four guests to share their thoughts about this beautiful aria. 

First up is soprano Ana María Martínez, who doesn't just like Madame Butterfly...

MARTÍNEZ: I love Madame Butterfly! And she has taught me beautiful lessons in life, in loyalty, in courage, in dignity. She has made me a better person.

GIDDENS: Composer and conductor Huang Ruo...

RUO: [singing]

GIDDENS: He's writing an opera based on M. Butterfly, the Tony award-winning play. It's a modern take on the Butterfly story.

RUO: To me has always been something I thought would be a great idea to truly update Madama Butterfly to a contemporary story.

GIDDENS: Sandra Kumamoto Stanley. She's a professor of Asian American studies at California State University.

STANLEY: Puccini's Madame Butterfly is a kind of a psychosexual fantasy about the nature of not just Asian women, but also Asia itself.

GIDDENS: And Kyoko Katayama, a writer and former psychotherapist who is here to share the story of her mother's life... and her own.

KATAYAMA: I was raised as a Japanese. On the other hand, I was also seen as a foreigner because my father was an American G.I.

GIDDENS: And now, let's get into it. "Un bel dì" from Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

STANLEY: I see Puccini's Madame Butterfly as a story of someone who's dreaming of a life that she wants and yearns for.

MARTÍNEZ: Cio-Cio-San is practically a child when we meet her in Act 1. She is a geisha who has left the geisha house to marry her American husband.

RUO: She was bought by Pinkerton to be his wife.

STANLEY: She sees this as much more than a transactional relationship, but in his eyes, this marriage is not for eternity. He calls Butterfly a plaything. He's going to enjoy his time in Japan and then essentially leave Madame Butterfly. Puccini's opera came out in the early 20th century. The Japanese were building up their military might up until World War II. And for many of the Japanese audience, they did think of it as a cautionary tale against the West. See what happens? You know, you may end up with someone like Pinkerton! 

KATAYAMA: The war was going on, and my mother lived in an old part of Tokyo. And one night, the U.S. dropped two thousand tons of incendiary bombs. Almost 800,000 died in just one night, and my mother's family was one of the victim. And so they just went through this trauma, and they're just really struggling to find some kind of stability and hope for the future. And eventually, they found a tiny apartment near part of Tokyo, Nakano station, which kind of became a famous station for me, because my mother told me that she met my birth father at Nakano station.

MARTÍNEZ: The young lady that then we see in Act 2 who's been waiting for her husband for three years is now the mother of their child. She's 18 at this moment, and she's gone through so much, but there's still an innocence about her. 

RUO: She has experienced hardship of family and life without her husband being home. And you know, the practical things. Where is the next meal coming from? You know, things like that.

STANLEY: But she's motivated by this dream that she has and willing to sacrifice for that.

KATAYAMA: So my mother would meet this G.I., American Soldier, at Nakano Station often, and one day there was money somebody dropped on the platform. At the same time, they tried to reach for the money and bumped their head. That began their conversation. My father was really taken by my mother, and they spent one night in really passionate lovemaking. And later, my mother was left, abandoned, pregnant, nowhere to go.

MARTÍNEZ: Act 2 begins with Suzuki praying, “Please, please allow Cio-Cio-San to not be so sad and to not cry anymore.” They have a very close bond, Suzuki and Cio-Cio-San, much like Suzuki being an almost maternal figure but also sister and best friend. And Suzuki's beginning to confront her to try to help Cio-Cio-San to see the reality. She says, “If he doesn't come back soon, we're going to be done in.”

And she starts weeping, and Cio-Cio-San says, “But why, why are you weeping? You have such little faith.” And then she starts her aria. 

So it's to reinforce Suzuki's hope, but it's really also to herself, to try to convince herself that he will come back.

STANLEY: Here we have sort of this yearning of Madame Butterfly, a yearning that will not be fulfilled in the way that she imagines it to be. We're sitting there and we're thinking, “Oh, she's so naive. This is not going to happen.”

RUO: I personally know people who fell in love so deeply and in self-denial just will not let go. That connects with people. We could feel her pain. We could see why she's suffering.

MARTÍNEZ: I know some female friends that do not want to go to see Madame Butterfly. They say, "Oh my God, she's such a victim,” or, “How weak,” or “Come on, snap out of it. He's not coming back." And I say, "No, you're missing the point. That's actually the strength that she has -- to remain that loyal." 

KATAYAMA: My mother's story was one day she lost touch with him in Tokyo. And she went through a great effort to find out where he was. And finally, she found out that he was transferred to station near Yokohama, which is the main port. 

So she ran all the way from the train station to the base, hoping that she would find him. And when she arrived, they told her that he was just shipped back. And she would just cry, because she needed to find him to tell him that she was pregnant with me.

RUO: The first part of this aria is just a big descending motion. Puccini put a very high G-flat as the first note, which is quite challenging for singers because they need to hit that in tune, but also very soft so that you could really hear that pure sound coming through... 

MARTÍNEZ: ...which really emphasizes her youthfulness, her hope. Hardly anything is happening in the orchestra, and that choice by Puccini is perfect. It's a moment of absolute quiet and zen. 

RUO: She is zooming in to what she sees -- the landscape, the harbor. And then little by little she sees the ship. So in a way you are drawn by her and following her vision and journey into this world where she's imagining her husband coming back, and that excitement, that desire, that -- in a way also -- bittersweetness. 

MARTÍNEZ: Literally, she says, "One fine day, this is how it's all going to play out, and he's going to arrive in his ship, and we will hear that cannon sound, and this man will appear in the distance just like a dot so far away, you can barely see him."

STANLEY: She sort of imagines even how she's going to be interacting with him, how she's going to tease him and that, ultimately, that he then will return and that it will be that beautiful or fine day.

KATAYAMA: My family never talked about it, but it was very clear that I was a foreigner because how I looked. They all understood that my mother had been given birth to a mixed-blood bastard child, child of an enemy and abandoned by the father. She was no longer eligible to be treated as a regular Japanese woman. She, in a way, became an outcast.

STANLEY: There's actually a term for mixed-race children, which is the "dust of life." They're often seen as marginalized. So there's a real challenge because the question is not just of identities that are crossing over racial lines, but it's also sort of a social narrative of, why do we have this child in this world? How did this child, in fact, come to be? Is the story a legitimate or illegitimate story? 

KATAYAMA: Japan is a patrilineal society. You exist through the acknowledgment by the father's side of the family. So one time by accident I saw a family registry, where the you know, there's a box for “Father.” It said "illegitimate" -- in Japanese, that word is "child born of herself," because the mother's side doesn't count. If the father doesn't acknowledge, you basically don't exist, and that was very, very shameful.

And I secretly held onto this hope that one day this man from America, from a powerful country, rich country, recognize me and everything will be okay.

MARTÍNEZ: And then the ship enters, "Poi la nave bianca entra nel porto." "The white clouds of smoke that are coming from the ship will enter through the port." And I love this, and I get chills when I think of it, "Romba il suo saluto."

RUO: I think Puccini has a natural gift for melody, but more than that, he could really use the voice to create drama. And he knows when to take time and when to push forward. And he was able to use the orchestra as a very important component to help to transition things.

MARTÍNEZ: And she says, "So this man, who will it be, who will it be? And what will he say?"

RUO: Puccini dropped the vocal range to lower range. Here the soprano doesn't need to scream or doesn't need to sing heroically, so that it become more intimate, more speaking-like. 

MARTÍNEZ: It's storytelling. Beautiful, vulnerable storytelling.

KATAYAMA: My mother met an American man, and she married him. So I came to the U.S. I was completely unprepared, you know. I knew America by the Father Knows Best T.V. show, Superman, all in Japanese dubbed. I really didn't know how things were so different culturally. So it was very, very difficult. And in the midst of all that, the fire, the longing to find my father kept going. So yeah, I looked. 

Decades passed, and it seemed, like, impossible. One time I was invited to be on a panel of people from different cultural backgrounds, and another panelist who heard my story said, "Let me find him!" And I said, "Are you kidding? It's not possible."

But three weeks later, he called me, and he said, "I found your dad!" and he gave me his phone number. And I didn't know what to do. You know, finally, when I... after I let go of ever finding him, he was found.

MARTÍNEZ: And then the orchestra comes in forte, and you can see all of the effort that Cio-Cio-San makes on a daily basis to keep her emotions contained. I think in order to not lose it. To not let her nerves overtake her. 

RUO: The opening is reprised again with more emotion and more weight in the orchestra as well to show the dramatic importance of this moment.

MARTÍNEZ: First she's envisioning him at afar, and then when that melodic phrase comes back, she's envisioning him already there. She can almost see him and feel him in front of her. 

STANLEY: One of the classic readings of Madame Butterfly is in the context of Orientalism in which Madame Butterfly is seen as a projection of a Western male fantasy, and that she's envisioned as the submissive, exoticized, Eastern sort of figure. She's then reduced, in that sense, to that kind of racialized fantasy.

If you're on the one hand working with a kind of exoticized fantasy, but on the other hand in the U.S. where you have anti-immigration laws, enacted laws, in certain states against interracial marriages and relationships, where is the place for someone like Madame Butterfly?

KATAYAMA: I couldn't call his number for a long time. And I went through a full cycle in my mind of different possibilities. And when I finally arrived at a place that no matter what he's going to say, you know, including the possibility of him utterly rejecting me and telling me he has nothing to do with me, I decided, “Okay, I'll call him. Find out.”

So finally I called that number, and he answered. And I said my name. And I said, "I think you knew a woman by name of…" you know, and I said my mother's first name. And that “I think you were in Japan during this time, 1946." And then I said in a hurry, "and I think I'm your daughter!" 

And he said, "I welcome you into my heart," and it just broke me down. So that was the beginning of getting to know my birth father.

MARTÍNEZ: What I love is that almost steel-like strength in her when she says, "All of this will transpire, ‘tutto questo avverrà, te lo prometto.’ I promise you all of this will happen." It ends in that climactic high note, the B-flat, which is so beautiful, when she says, "You, Suzuki, can hold onto your doubts, but I wait for him!"

RUO: Then, the orchestra brings back the theme [singing] to play out in fortissimo without anyone singing, without her singing. And then you know the stage direction, at that point, is for Madame Butterfly to embrace Suzuki, you know, two of them are embraced with emotion. 

Puccini successfully give us a suspense. It's not an aria just hopeless, but it is an aria that has hope. But we don't know where that hope will lead us.

MARTÍNEZ: I think that hope is one of the greatest and strongest lifelines that we have, and I think that the greatest amount of growth, inner growth, happens during the periods of tremendous hope.

STANLEY: The Madame Butterfly figure has this naive faith. She's imagining this place for herself. But that place, then, simply disintegrates before her eyes. The irony, of course, is that, yes, he does return, but he returns only to have all those illusions and all her dreams then destroyed.

Unfortunately, when she finds that not only will that dream not be fulfilled, but that her place in that dream is taken by another woman, she then takes her own life. She makes that choice ultimately to erase herself. 

KATAYAMA: What choices did she have? I asked many times about what agency did my mother have, what agency did Butterfly have? Nothing was good, you know, there were not really options. And given the limited choice she had, that single faith that he will come back -- is that stupidity or is that courage? Who knew? Who knew? And what resources did she have to overcome these excruciating pain? I feel really, really sad for her. I feel pain for my mother.

And actually, that's one of the reasons that I agree to speak with you -- because I wanted to give my mother some voice that she didn't have. I had to wait 70 years to do that.

END OF DECODE

GIDDENS: That was Kyoko Katayama, soprano Ana María Martínez, composer Huang Ruo, and professor Sandra Kumamoto Stanley decoding "Un bel dì, vedremo" from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. 

You'll hear Ana María Martínez sing the whole thing after the break. 

[Break]

And now, Ana María Martínez singing "Un bel dì" on stage at the Metropolitan Opera.

[Ana María Martínez sings "Un bel dì"]

GIDDENS: Wow, that was beautiful. But it means that it's time to wrap up this episode of Aria Code. And there's a lot more to come so don't be a Pinkerton, alright? Come back. 

Aria Code is a co-production of WQXR and the Metropolitan Opera. The show is produced and scored by Merrin Lazyan. Emily Lang is our associate producer, Brendan Francis Newnam is our editor, and Matt Abramovitz is our executive producer. Sound design and mixing by Matt Boynton, and original music by Hannis Brown. I'm Rhiannon Giddens. See you next time! Sayonara.

[Rhiannon reintroduces herself in Japanese]

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