(While this Japanese-directed production last year had its issues, it had its fans in Tokyo, and I was interested to see how it would fare overseas. Unfortunately its foreign debut in Dresden was cancelled due to the pandemic. I had written the article below for the international run, so I’m reprinting that here.)

The iconoclastic Japanese stage director Amon Miyamoto has a problem with Madame Butterfly. The stereotypical image of a spurned geisha? The sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old girl? A warped Western view of his country?

No, he feels that the opera mistreats the American.

That would be Pinkerton, the US naval lieutenant who purchases Butterfly’s temporary companionship for 100 yen, speaks blithely on their wedding day of one day taking a “real American wife,” leaves Japan almost immediately after marrying and impregnating her, and returns unannounced three years later with a new bride to retrieve his son and take him back to the US. He is typically portrayed as a villain, and it’s not hard to see why – the opera has even been criticized by some as anti-American.

Miyamoto, as usual, takes his own path in a co-production of the Semperoper Dresden, Tokyo Nikikai Opera, Royal Danish Theatre and San Francisco Opera that debuted in Tokyo in October. Continue reading →