NAMES IN THE NEWS : Watanabe Stars in ‘Butterfly’
Japanese soprano Yoko Watanabe is starring in the Dallas Opera production of “Madame Butterfly,” the story of a geisha who marries an American naval officer.
The production begins Friday night. It will be the first time in the company’s history that a Japanese singer will perform the role of Butterfly.
The opera, in which the American Pinkerton sails away while the geisha bears their child and awaits his return, is from the Japan of another era, Watanabe said.
When Pinkerton returns--with his new American wife--the geisha commits suicide. A modern Japanese woman would not kill herself over a faithless man, said Watanabe, who is from Fukuoka, Japan, and now lives in Milan, Italy.
“Essentially, I don’t think Japanese,” Watanabe said. “I think (of myself as) a European lady playing a Japanese lady of old times.”
But the quaint ethnicity of “Butterfly” doesn’t detract from its popularity in Japan, she said.
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