Essential Question Cycle 21 Response 1

I saw Puccini’s Madama Butterfly when Hawaii Opera Theatre was playing it this last opera season. My parents thought that I should definitely go because it is part of the opera canon. I was already vaguely familiar with the plot because I saw Miss Saigon when it came to Hawaii around six years ago, but that was a long time ago. In both productions, the heroine of the story lives in an Asian country. An American soldier falls in love with her during the war. They get married, and she is impregnated. The American soldier goes back to America not knowing that she is expecting a child. He promises her that he will come back soon, but instead settles down with an American woman. When he eventually returns to the Asian country with his wife, he finds that she has been waiting all this time with his child. In desperation, the heroine of the story commits suicide and the American family is left to take car of the child. The actor in both the productions I saw vividly portrayed the character’s grief and anguish.

Watching Madama Butterfly made me think about my essential question. I thought about how one woman’s anguish is kept in a beautiful opera, telling her story decades later. It made me think about how all that emotion is stored and that the woman is immortalized in this story. I also realized that because a similar story is told in Miss Saigon, that many other woman have found them selves in similar situations and felt similar emotions in history. I wondered if these stories also captured the lives of these women as well as the grief and anguish that they also felt. I also wondered if it stopped here. I wondered if the stories representation stopped at women from Asian countries who have felt grief or anguish because of complications due to love for American soldier who they met during the war. But I thought, if the production did not end its representation here where would it? I wondered whether this production could immortalize all individuals who have ever felt similarly to the heroine of the story. I wasn’t sure if this was possible, but I am sure that these productions are a way to immortalize the events of history and the grief and anguish of such individuals affected by these events in history.