Visual clichés and inspiring musicians

With Madama Butterfly, Puccini created a very delicate work. On one hand, he didn’t abandon the tradition of Italian melodramma; on the other, he enriched his musical language by giving in to the fashion of exoticism that had strongly influenced European fin de siècle art and culture. Although some melodic and harmonic devices Puccini used draw upon oriental music, his goal was not to provide Italian audience with actual Japanese music, nor did the idea of Japan portrayed in the opera correspond to any historical truth. This has often led to the opinion that Puccini’s opera represented the naive image that a Western tourist might have had of Japan, with its architecture, its gardens with cherry trees, small bridge, and statues of local Gods. This can be partially true in the first act, where a white male character, American Marine…