GERALDINE FARRAR AS CHO-CHO-SAN, IN PUCCINI’S OPERA, “MADAMA BUTTERFLY,” BASED ON BELASCO’S TRAGEDY
Puccini’s use of it to heighten the dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her child in the Second Act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out fortissimo in naked unison with the periodic punctuations of harmony at the close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the Third Act and the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous songs in the Marriage Scene be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful. As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score, music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene in which Butterfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room in expectation of Pinkerton’s return. Here melodies and harmonies are exhaled like the odors of the flowers.”
And elsewhere Mr. Krehbiel remarks that
“there is nothing more admirable in the score of ’Madama Butterfly’ than the refined and ingenious skill with which the composer bent the square-toed rhythms and monotonous tunes of Japanese music to his purposes.”
“Madame Butterfly” ran at the Duke of York’s Theatre until July 13. In America it was presented, throughout the season of 1900-’01, beginning at Elmira, New York, September 17, in association with “Naughty Anthony,” by a company headed by Miss Valerie Bergere and Charles E. Evans. On February 18, 1901, the tragedy was acted at Proctor’s Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, and ran till May 11. Miss Bergere performed as Cho-Cho-San until March 29, when she was succeeded by the French actress Mlle. Pilar-Morin. Since then “Butterfly” has been acted unnumbered times.
During the summer season of “Zaza” in London (1900), Belasco was approached by the eccentric Lady Valerie Meux, a person of great wealth and peculiar antecedents, with a proposal that he give up the management and direction of Mrs. Carter and assume that of Mrs. Cora Urquhart Potter, in whom she was then much interested. Belasco was well acquainted with Mrs. Potter, who, indeed, was one of the many amateur players trained by him while at the Madison Square Theatre (1884, et seq.) and for whose professional appearance on the stage, under the management of Daniel Frohman, he had arranged, in 1886,—an arrangement which Mrs. Potter suddenly abrogated. Belasco esteemed her histrionic abilities much higher than ever there was warrant for doing (he has written about her: “If I could have succeeded in drawing her away from society, from the host of admirers and over-zealous friends who fondled and petted her and kept her from really working, and if she could have appreciated the simplicity of life, she could have taken front rank in her profession”), but he would not give up the direction or Mrs. Carter’s career and therefore he declined Lady Meux’s proposal. That singular person then expressed a wish that he should transfer his theatrical activities from America to England, offered to build for him “the finest playhouse in the land” and to provide him with ample money with which to conduct it, so that he “might be free and untrammelled by financial cares” and fulfil all his ambitions. “Of course,” he has said, in telling me of these incidents, “her offer had a tempting sound, but nothing could have induced me to accept it. Not only would I not consider deserting Mrs. Carter, but I knew that Mrs. Potter could never give up the social world for the exclusive hard work of the Stage. And also I knew that within a year, perhaps less, Lady Meux would have grown tired of her fancy and my position would be intolerable. I wanted a theatre in London—in fact, I want one now and, perhaps, in spite of the war, I may have one yet—but not one tied up in apron-strings.” His decision to reject the offers of Lady Meux certainly was wise.
