Recently I wrote up a list of Opera Endings Guaranteed To Make You Weep. I wrote it because I was thinking of sending it to this list site called Listverse.
Listverse pays you $100 or something for lists. Not a lot of money however I like to do what I can to help people appreciate opera. It really bothers me, the idea of someone going through life never knowing Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” I also like writing about opera because I do not make fun of it. Opera is such a big slow target if you want to make fun of it, and you shouldn’t. I mean, you can laugh about it. There are lots of funny operas — as a matter of fact, a few on my list of operas with the weepiest endings are comedies. But I think it is important to treat opera with respect.
Hence I got busy, writing my list.
I kept each writeup short and entertaining, as Listverse asked you to. Ultimately however I never sent it in. What stopped me was that I read in the fine print that if your list is accepted, you surrender all your rights to it. I am a professional writer and I am past the stage in my life when I would accept terms like that, especially for just $100.
So … seeing that I own my list, let’s start going through it! Here is Opera No. 10: Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aiw12ZnpjBo
Listverse asked that I name a source for info on the story: https://www.metopera.org/Discover/Synopses/Madama-Butterfly/
The music of “Madame Butterfly” is full of glorious Japanese flair. However the story, which takes place around the year 1900, is a shocker. Butterfly is a young Japanese girl who forsakes her family and culture to marry an American officer, Lieutenant Pinkerton. She doesn’t realize that Pinkerton sees her as a toy.
After the wedding, he leaves her, promising he will return. A few years pass and she never gives up hope, waiting with their young son, and scanning the horizon every day. In the last act, Pinkerton does finally return – with an American wife, Kate. Butterfly caresses and then blindfolds their son and commits suicide, bringing this tragedy to a heartbreaking close. As one commenter wrote on YouTube: “Who’s cutting the onions?”
Continuing in my non-Listverse voice: Puccini is a great “starter composer” if you are new to opera. I worked at The Buffalo News with a reporter named Agnes Palazetti who loved opera. And she said to me, “What opera do you give to people who have never heard opera before? There is only one answer. Puccini.”
“There is only one answer. Puccini.” I always remember that.
So there we are, my No. 10, “Madame Butterfly.” I will follow it shortly with No. 9. If you are an opera fan maybe you should secretly make your own list and see how it lines up with mine. That is one reason to present the operas one by one.
Another reason is, when I had the list of all of them together, it’s just overkill. We need a little while to watch the video of the ending — I tried to find videos with translations — and maybe study up on the opera a little. Maybe track down a few more videos, listen to some records if you are a vinyl fan the way I am. Maybe just to think about things. Too many operas all at one time is overkill, it’s not right.
Operas need time and space. That is one reason it is an acquired taste. I have acquired it. I hope other people do, too!
See you soon with No. 9!
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