MADAME BUTTERFLY
Beauty of plot and great music are to an opera what fair features and a noble soul are to woman. "Madame Butterfly" possesses these attributes, and has consequently won that instant success which only true beauty, in either art or nature, calls forth.
Very seldom is the story of an opera so intensely thrilling that the original author is borne in mind; but it may be stated as a fact that no one applauds Giacomo Puccini's splendid music without also thinking "All Hail!" to John Luther Long, who wrote this strangely tender tragedy.
Distinctly unique as a grand opera setting is the Land of Cherry-blossoms. Never before have the higher harmonies been blended in with embroidered kimonas and chrysanthemum screens. The innovation is delightful, however; refreshing, uplifting, enlarging. By means of great music we are enabled to understand great emotion in the Little Land.
In this opera the hero is the villain, if one may so express it. He is also an American; a lieutenant in the U. S. Navy, and from first to last he seems blandly unconscious of his villainy. This is distressing morally, but musically one could wish it no different. As the rainbow-mist rises out of the whirlpool, so the beautiful in art is most often evolved from a maelstrom of sin and tragedy.
A flowered veranda to a tiny house, a lilac-garden that overlooks a far, fair view of Nagasaki, the bright blue bay and azure sky—this is the opening scene of Puccini's opera.
The brief orchestral prelude is a pretty piece of fugue work, four-voiced and accurately constructed. A fugue is unusual in grand opera, but Puccini has a purpose in everything, and his music is essentially descriptive. The opening conversation in this opera concerns the construction of the tiny villa, and as a fugue is the one music-form suggestive of rules and measurements—a secure foundation and precise superstructure—it is clear that this bit of musical masonry, with its themes overlapping but carefully joined, is intended to represent the house.
On the stage the dainty dwelling is glowingly described by Goro, a Japanese marriage-broker; very obsequious in manners, but characterized in the orchestra by a most energetic, business-like theme that follows him around like a shadow.
A wedding of his arranging is soon to take place, and this house has been rented for the honeymoon. The bridegroom, Lieutenant Pinkerton, of the U. S. Navy, is viewing the abode for the first time. He wears a handsome uniform, and serves the opera as tenor, hero, lover, villain—all in one.