Performing exoticism in a globalized world: Puccini's operas in the 21st century

Abstract

Exoticism in opera has become one of the hot-button issues that modern productions are required to address, especially regarding the representation of Asian races. This has come about thanks to evolving social changes and burgeoning discussions in post-colonial studies since the late 20th century. This scholarly discourse originates from Edward Said’s Orientalism, in which he suggested that Western presentations of the exotic East are merely the imaginings of the West. While traditional exotic opera productions (before the 1980s) have made efforts to present exotic elements as ‘authentically’ and ‘realistically’ as they could be, directors in recent decades have developed diverse approaches for handling exoticism through innovative stagings, with an emphasis on what theatre scholar Gay McAuley calls the ‘material signifiers’ of any given performance. Musicologists have even discovered a ‘de-exoticizing’ phenomenon in recent exotic opera productions. This study introduces a novel framework for analysing contemporary productions of two exotic opera classics: Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (1924, unfinished). Building upon the work of Jonathan Bellman, Ralph Locke, Kunio Hara, and others regarding musical exoticism and exotic opera performances, this study discerns three directorial approaches to these productions: (1) the ‘imagined-authentic’ approach, (2) the ‘authenticity-seeking’ approach, and (3) the ‘critical-Regie’ approach. This study then offers close analyses of several modern productions of the two featured operas, and demonstrates that evolving political discourse in tandem with 21st-century globalisation has brought changes to performance practices in modern productions of exotic opera.