Photograph by Byron. Belasco’s Collection.
“Too bad—those robin—never nes’—again!”
THE DEATH SCENE, BELASCO’S “MADAME BUTTERFLY”
BLANCHE BATES AS CHO-CHO-SAN. FRANK WORTHING AS LIEUTENANT B. F. PINKERTON
reception, attiring herself and their little child in fine array and decking the house with flowers and lighted lanterns. Then, with the child and a servant maid, she takes station at a window, to give him welcome—and there she waits and watches through the night, until the morning breaks. The lapse of time was, in the performance, skilfully and impressively denoted,—the shades of evening darkening into night; stars becoming visible, then brilliant, then fading from view; the lighted lanterns one by one flickering out; the gray light of dawn revealing the servant and the child prone upon the floor sunk in slumber, with the deserted mother standing over them, pale and wan, still gazing fixedly down the vacant road, while the rosy glow of sunrise grew into the full light of day and the sweet sound of the waking songs of birds floated in from a flowering grove of cherry trees. In the representation this scene, during which no word was spoken and no motion made, occupied fourteen minutes—and surely no tribute to Belasco’s resource and skill in stage management and stage mechanics could be more significant than the fact that during all that time never did the interest of his audiences waver nor their attention flag.
At the end, when Butterfly knows her lover faithless and her life ruined and desolate, she takes her father’s sword,—on which is graven his dying monition, “To die with honor, when we can no longer live with honor,”—and with it deals herself a mortal stroke. This desperate deed is done out of the audience’s sight and as, with ghastly face and a scarf bound round her throat to hide the wound, she staggers forward to clasp her child to her breast, Pinkerton enters the room and Butterfly, holding the child in her arms, sinks at his feet, turning on him a look of anguish as she murmurs “Too bad—those robin’—never nes’—again!”—and so dies.
“Madame Butterfly” was first presented at the Herald Square Theatre, March 5, 1900. The scenic habiliment in which Belasco attired that tragedy was one of great beauty and perfect taste and it had never been equalled by anything rightly comparable, excepting Augustin Daly’s exquisite setting of “Heart of Ruby” (a play on a Japanese theme adapted by Justin Huntly McCarthy from Mme. Judith Gautier’s “La Marchande de Sourires”), produced at Daly’s Theatre, January 15, 1895,—which was a complete failure: it cost Daly about $25,000 and it was withdrawn after seven performances. Belasco’s Japanese venture, happily, was fortunate from the first, creating a profound impression and achieving instant success. A notably effective scenic innovation was the precedent use of “picture drops,” delicately painted and very lovely pictures showing various aspects of Japan,—a rice field, a flower garden, a distant prospect of a snow-capped volcano in the light of the setting sun, and other views,—by way of creating a Japanese atmosphere before the scene of the drama was disclosed. Blanche Bates embodied the hapless Butterfly and animated the character with a winning show of woman’s fidelity, with a lovely artlessness of manner and speech, and with occasional flashes of that vivid emotional fire which was her supreme attribute. Her personation at first caused laughter and at last touched the source of tears,—but the predominant figure in the history of this play, both at the first and now, was and is that of Belasco: more, perhaps, in respect to “Madame Butterfly” than of any other of his productions it may properly be said that his personality seemed to have permeated every detail of this performance and its environment. This was the original cast: