This
month on Clef Notes, we are looking at exoticism found in music. Last time, we
looked at Bizet’s famous opera, Carmen.
Today, let’s travel to Japan for an opera many of you may have enjoyed during
the Cincinnati Opera’s 2014 season: Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904).
Puccini
created his own unique style by combining elements of the great opera composers
who came before him: Verdi’s gorgeous vocal melodies and Wagner’s leitmotifs.
Puccini uses arias, choruses, duets, etc. throughout and blurs the distinction
between recitatives and arias used in operas in the prior century.
In
Madama Butterfly, Puccini combines
elements of Western-Romantic music and exoticism by telling the magazine story
by John Luther Long of a young geisha who gives up her family and religion to
marry American Lieutenant Pinkerton who promises to come retrieve her from
Japan. After a three-year wait, he returns with a new wife, leaving young
Butterfly heartbroken. Pentatonic and whole-tone scales can be heard throughout
Puccini’s score, a feature that Western audiences commonly associated with the
East.
Here
is a clip showing a famous aria from this opera—“Un bel di vedromo,” sung by
Maria Callas:
Can
you hear exotic elements in the “Un bel di vedremo”?
