When Japanese audiences encountered Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”—a sumptuous Italianate treatment of a geisha’s doomed love for an American naval officer—they found it implausible, insulting, and riotously funny. In 1925, two decades after the opera’s première, the Japan Times reported “screams of hearty laughter” as spectators took in the posturings of a touring foreign troupe. Puccini’s habit of citing popular Japanese songs did not help matters. As Arthur Groos points out in “Madama Butterfly/ Madamu Batafurai,” a new book about the opera’s Japanese sources and reception, the composer ignored advice about how to use his material appropriately. When Suzuki, Butterfly’s maid, prays at an alleged Buddhist shrine, she sings to the tune of “Takai Yama,” a song that extols cucumbers and eggplants. Furthermore, she garbles the names of Shinto gods, who don’t belong in a Buddhist setting to begin with. It’s similar, Groos writes, to “having a Catholic pray to Adam and Eve in front of a menorah.”
この記事は The New Yorker の October 30, 2023 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は The New Yorker の October 30, 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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THE ST. ALWYNN GIRLS AT SEA SHEILA HETI
There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys' ship would not be attending. It almost wasn't worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys' ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
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