3 - Far West/Far East: Luigi Illica’s Libretto

Summary

Examines Luigi Illica’s draft libretto and its comic opposition of West and East. The opening scene occidentalizes the hero as Sir Francis Blummy Pinkerton, using details from Pierre Loti’s novel to express his unsympathetic views of Japan and his “marriage” as a joke, while a later scene/act, set at the American consulate, foregrounds the “comedy” of Butterfly’s failed acculturation, climaxing in her disillusioning encounter with Pinkerton’s New American Wife. Orientalizing Cio-Cio-san from a prevalently racist European perspective as naïve and inscrutable, however, prevented Illica from investing her with the interiority necessary for the emotional high points of a tragic opera. His concluding scenes rely on narrative intermezzi to evoke the heroine’s state of mind, using images from ukiyo-e artist Hokusai to create a bleak ambience for the almost wordless suicide of a culturally alienated subject.