IO ANSWER: IO explored several options for our inaugural Book Club, some of them more closely paralleled Madama Butterfly and some of them explored some of the surface themes of the opera (for instance Memoires of a Geisha). In the end, we felt that it was more interesting and thought provoking to explore the themes of discrimination, cultural insensitivity and unrequited love. What struck me, even in the first pages of the book, was Ishmaels subtle similarities to Butterfly – he’s pining for someone he can’t have and in many ways he doesn’t fit into his own community, he’s an outsider among his own people much like Butterfly was a bt of an outsider among her culture and Pinkerton’s culture.

IO ANSWER: In the beginning of the novel, which takes place during a snow storm, you can feel the cold emanating from the page and can so clearly picture the dim courtroom and the hushed chatter that seems to accompany inclement weather. Gunderson is quietly building to a dramatic revelation, and I found myself struggling not to skip ahead to discover the crime. I felt, though, when he finally got there, that the revelation was actually a bit anti-climatic. This is in sharp contrast to Puccini, who quickly foreshadows Butterfly’s fate with Pinkerton’s lackadaisical attitude about his marriage contract with Cio-Cio San and Cio-Cio San’s obvious devotion to Pinkerton. While Puccini gives us this bit of insight at the beginning of the opera, he delays the most dramatic moment until the very end. Unlike Gunderson, when Puccini’s intentions for Butterfly are revealed, even when you know it’s coming, it’s dramatic and poignant every time.

Between 1901 and 1907, almost 110,000 Japanese immigrated to the United States. They were drawn by promises of ready work–American railroads actually sent recruiters to Japanese port cities, offering laborers three to five times their customary wages–and by worsening economic conditions in their homeland, which was undergoing social upheaval in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration. Although many originally came as dekaseginin–temporary sojourners–work was plentiful, not only on the railroads, but in the lumber camps, salmon fisheries, and fruit orchards of Oregon and Washington. Increasingly, the newcomers stayed on. Many purchased their own farms. In time, these issei–first-generation Japanese–started families.

The Japanese government actively encouraged emigration, and although the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1908 curbed the flow of Japanese men, it allowed unrestricted entry to their wives and children. Many women were “picture brides,” who came to join husbands they knew only through photographs and letters and whom they had “married” by proxy in ceremonies in their native villages.

Very quickly the newcomers encountered antagonism. Although Japanese constituted less than two percent of all immigrants to the U.S., newspapers trumpeted an “invasion.” The mayor of San Francisco proclaimed that “the Japanese are not the stuff of which American citizens can be made.” The Sacramento Bee warned that “the Japs…will increase like rats” if allowed to settle down. The Asiatic Exclusion League agitated for legislation to halt all Japanese immigration. Politicians ran for office on anti-Japanese platforms. In 1923, the state of Oregon prohibited issei from legally buying land. A year later, Congress passed the National Origins Act, which banned all immigration from Japan.

In spite of this, the newcomers thrived. They found ways of getting around some laws (under Oregon’s Alien Land Law, first-generation Japanese could legalize their land purchases by registering them in the names of their American-born-or nisei-children). They tolerated other laws. Meanwhile, the immigrants preserved the ceremonies and values of Japan even as they encouraged their children to acculturate and, particularly, to educate themselves. “You must outperform your detractors,” one issei counseled his children. Typically, the nisei grew up thinking of themselves as Americans, yet were reminded of their difference every time they encountered the taunts and ostracism of their white neighbors.

Following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, hostility turned into paranoia–and paranoia became law. Japanese who had lived in America for thirty years were accused of spying for their native land. The day after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Treasury Department ordered all Japanese-owned businesses closed and all issei bank accounts frozen. The U.S. government had already compiled lists of Japanese whose loyalties might be suspect, and more than 1,000 businessmen, community leaders, priests, and educators were arrested up and down the West Coast.

The restrictions escalated. Japanese homes were searched for contraband. Telephone service was cut off. One newspaper columnist wrote: “I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior….Herd ‘em up, pack ‘em off and give ‘em the inside room in the badlands…let ‘em be pinched, hurt, and hungry.” In February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which empowered the government to remove “any and all” persons of Japanese ancestry from sensitive military areas in four western states. Japanese residents had only days in which to evacuate. They were compelled to sell their land and businesses for a fraction of their value, or to lease them to neighbors who would later refuse to pay their rent. All told, some 110,000 Japanese Americans were deported from their homes to hastily built camps such as Tule Lake and Manzanar, where they lived behind barbed wire for the duration of the war.

Neither Germans nor Italians living in this country were subject to similar restrictions, and recently declassified documents reveal that the Japanese population was never considered a serious threat to American security. In all of World War II, no person of Japanese ancestry living in the United States, Alaska, or Hawaii was ever charged with any act of espionage or sabotage. As one nisei later wrote, the victims of Executive Order 9066 were people whose “only crime was their face.”

In 1988, the U.S. government formally apologized to Japanese citizens who had been deprived of their civil liberties during World War II.

This information was gathered from Lauren Kessler, Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese-American Family. New York, Random House, 1993. Courtesy of Bookbrowse.com

b Lucca , December 22, 1858; d Brussels , November 29, 1924

Puccini was born into a family of court composers and organists in the historic city of Lucca , Italy. With a strong feeling of tradition in the Puccini family, it was expected that Giacomo would assume his deceased father’s position as maestro di cappella when he came of age — by 14 he already was playing organ in a number of the town’s churches. But at age 18 a performance of Verdi’s Aida inspired him to devote his life to opera. In 1880, Puccini began composition studies with Amilcare Ponchielli at the Milan Conservatory of Music. There he was introduced into the professional artists’ circle, to which he would belong for the rest of his life.

He was not a prolific composer. Unlike most of his contemporaries, there were long intervals between his operas, partly because of his fastidiousness in choosing subjects, several of which he took up only to abandon after several months, and partly because of his constant demands for modifications of the texts. Much of his time, too, was spent in hunting in the marshes around his home and in trips abroad to supervise revivals of his works.

Puccini’s first work for the stage, Le villi, originally was submitted to a contest sponsored by the music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno. The one-act opera received not even honorable mention, but Puccini was certain of its merit. He and librettist Ferdinando Fontana began to canvass the opera to the broader circle of the Italian intelligentsia. One of these individuals was the highly influential Arrigo Boito (at that time in correspondence with Verdi about the preparation of the libretto for Otello), who was instrumental in getting Le villi staged.

The reception to the new work was mixed, but the revised two-act version was staged in a number of cities outside of Italy (a remarkable feat for a virtually unknown composer). Puccini’s next opera, Edgar, however, was a resounding critical failure, yet the astute publisher, Giulio Ricordi, found fault in the libretto only and promise in the music. He pitted himself against the shareholders of his publishing house who demanded that Puccini be released from retainer. Ricordi’s confidence was rewarded with Manon Lescaut, Puccini’s first true success.

In 1884, Puccini became acquainted with Elvira Gemignani, who was encouraged by her husband, a pharmacist and former classmate of Puccini’s, to take voice lessons with the composer. Shortly after his mother’s death, he was joined by Elvira and her daughter, Fosca, in Milan. She left her son, Renato, with her husband. Two years later she gave birth to their only child, Antonio. The couple was not married until 1903, after the death of Elvira’s first husband.

With the popularity of Manon Lescaut, Puccini was now generally considered by the Italian art circle to be Verdi’s successor (even by the great composer himself). As the royalties began rolling in, Puccini began to show a predilection for machines and gadgets, in particular fast automobiles and motor boats. His solitary nature drew him to a purchase a villa near the sea, surrounded by the mountains at Torre del Lago.

During the 1890s Puccini began working with Luigi Illica, who worked out the scheme and drafted the dialogue, and with the poet and playwright Giuseppe Giacosa, who put Illica’s lines into verse. Although they had participated in Manon Lescaut (as part of a string of several librettists), their first real collaboration was La bohème in 1896, followed four years later by Toscaand then Madame Butterfly four years after that. Giacosa died in 1906, putting an end to the successful team that produced three of Puccini’s most enduring works.

While Puccini was recuperating from an automobile accident, a young girl named Doria Manfredi was hired as a nurse and maid. She remained in the household as the Puccinis’ maid. Ever suspicious, Elvira saw the makings of an affair and immediately discharged her. She continued her slanderous accusations through the small village, and the townspeople, aware of her husband’s past philandering, quite naturally believed her. In this case, however, she was innocent, and totally humiliated, took poison, dying five days later after unbearable suffering. Giacomo took refuge in Rome and Elvira fled to Milan. Doria’s family sued Elvira following an autopsy that proved Doria’s virginity.

Puccini and his wife lived apart for four months while Elvira persisted in defending her legal position. The case was tried and she was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment — but Puccini made a large financial settlement with the Manfredi family and the lawsuit was dropped. In September of 1909, Giacomo, Elvira and Antonio were reunited at Torre. A month later he wrote, “In my home I have peace — Elvira is good — and the three of us live happily together.”

Puccini’s later operas were quite varied in their styles and subjects. La fanciulla del West, set in the American West, is notable for its advanced impressionistic orchestration and composition. La rondine was designed to be a sentimental musical comedy in the Viennese style. Il trittico was a mixed bag of one-act operas: Il tabarro, a tip-of-the-hat to Italian verismo; Suor Angelica, a nun embroiled in a battle for the future of her illegitimate child; and, most popular of the three, Gianni Schicchi, a comic masterpiece that features Puccini at his most exuberant.

Turandot was Puccini’s last (and arguably his greatest) opera. He died before completing it, and although another composer finished the job, at the premiere Arturo Toscanini set down his baton and refused to continue past Puccini’s last note.

Puccini has been much maligned for his flirtation with popular music, but he had an uncanny feel for a good story and a talent for composing enthralling yet economical music. Though like many of his contemporaries Puccini constantly was experimenting with tonality and form, his experiments were always subtle and without controversy. Having produced only 12 operas, the composer’s personal life was plagued with self doubt and laborious perfectionism, yet he profoundly influenced the world of opera with a deep understanding of music, drama and humanity.

Courtesy of The Minnesota Opera