MONDAY MARCH 26 at 5 PM in the FISHBOWL
Giacomo Puccini employed the Orientalist toolkit of his predecessors in composing the sounds of Asia in many parts of his 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly. He used existing folk melodies or composed sounds using pentatonic scales and Asian-identified instruments to create an Orientalist tinte. However, I argue that Puccini also used what Italians at the time considered foreign, such as atonal music, to denote the exotic Asia in this opera. In this talk, I will discuss Puccini’s sounds of Asia, especially his use of these modernist sounds in portraying the main character, Cio-cio San.