The Butterfly Project
in partnership with Amplified Opera presents:
An online symposium exploring issues surrounding Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
This two-day symposium celebrates the premiere of Teiya Kasahara’s 笠原貞野 (they/them) new film The Butterfly Project: The Ballad of Chō-Chō San and the Canadian Opera Company’s planned 2022 production of Madama Butterfly, and calls attention to the problematic nature of this opera in today’s environment of growing cultural awareness.
All symposium events will be presented online without charge. Advance registration is required.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2022
7:00–9:00 PM EST
Pre-Performance Presentation
Introducing The Ballad of Chō-Chō San and its themes
Marion Newman (she/her), mezzo-soprano, artistic associate of Confluence Concerts, co-founder of Amplified Opera
Kunio Hara (he/him), Associate Professor, Music History at the University of South Carolina
Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/them), soprano, creator of the Butterfly Project, co-founder of Amplified Opera
Asitha Tennekoon (he/him), tenor, co-founder of Amplified Opera
Aria Umezawa (she/her), co-founder of Amplified Opera and Aria Umezawa (she/her), co-founder of Amplified Opera, director of the COC’s planned* 2022 production of Madama Butterfly.
Film Premiere
The Butterfly Project: The Ballad of Chō-Chō San
Teiya Kasahara’s 笠原貞野 ongoing performance project examines Madama Butterfly and its appropriated Japanese melodies
Post-Performance Reception and Artist Talk Back
Larry Beckwith (he/him), artistic producer of Confluence Concerts
Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野
Symposium
The symposium is co-presented by Confluence Concerts, Amplified Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto, and the Humanities Initiative at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
Academic advisors:
Caryl Clark (she/her), Professor of Music History at the University of Toronto
Linda Hutcheon (she/her), University Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2022
10:00 AM–1:00 PM EST
10:00
Welcome
Marion Newman — mezzo soprano, co-founder of Amplified Opera, Confluence Concerts Artistic Associate, host of CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera
10:10
Approaches to Producing Madama Butterfly: Considerations, challenges, and opportunities for 21st-century audiences
Host — Jaclyn Grossman (she/her), mezzo-soprano, Program Associate for the Association of Opera in Canada, co-founder of the Likht Ensemble
Creative Re-appropriation — Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野, soprano, creator, co-founder of Amplified Opera
Rehabilitating — Perryn Leech (he/him), General Director of the Canadian Opera Company
11:00
Classical Music by Contemporary Japanese Artists
Curated by Chihiro Yasufuku (she/her), soprano and student at the Faculty of Music (UofT)
11:10
Inclusion and the Pathway Forward: Tackling Race and Gender in Opera
Host — Caryl Clark (she/her), Professor of Music, University of Toronto
Kunio Hara, Associate Professor, Music History at the University of South Carolina
Ellie Hisama (she/her), Dean of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto
Susan McClary (she/her), Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University
12:00
Classical Music by Contemporary Japanese Artists
Curated by Chihiro Yasufuku, soprano and student at the Faculty of Music (UofT)
12:10
Through New Eyes — Tackling Inherited Productions of Madama Butterfly
Eiki Isomura (he/him), Artistic Director and conductor of Opera in the Heights, Texas
kt shorb (they/them), performer, teacher, director of The Mikado: Reclaimed for VORTEX Repertory Studio, Texas
Aria Umezawa, host, and director of the COC’s planned* 2022 production of Madama Butterfly
1:00
Closing Remarks
Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野
Symposium Guests
Eiki Isomura
Japanese-American conductor Eiki Isomura is in his fourth season as artistic director and principal conductor of Opera in the Heights (OH), where he has led over a hundred performances of over twenty-five operas, drawing consistent praise for elevating the company’s performance standard.
He has served on the music staff of Opera in the Ozarks, as well as HGOco, preparing and performing numerous world premieres of chamber operas for Houston Grand Opera. A passionate advocate for new music, Eiki launched OH’s’ first-ever new works festival. He previously served as director of orchestral activities at Lone Star College-Montgomery and held a residency as guest music director of opera at Temple University. Eiki holds a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Kenneth Kiesler, also his mentor in the conductors program at the National Arts Centre in Canada, where Eiki worked with the NAC Orchestra.
Kunio Hara
Kunio Hara is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of South Carolina. His main area of research is 19th-century Italian opera, particularly the works of Giacomo Puccini. Kunio’s initial interest in Puccini’s musical representation of Japanese people and culture in Madama Butterfly developed into the exploration of the careers of Japanese opera singers, such as Tamaki Miura and Yoshie Fujiwara, who actively engaged with the opera. His article on Miura’s final performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in Japan under U.S. occupation appeared in the journal Music and Politics. Last fall, Kunio Hara presented a paper on Fujiwara Opera Company’s U.S. tour in the 1950s at the national meeting of the American Musicological Society.
Kunio’s research also focuses on how the idea of nostalgia operates in Puccini’s works and it has contributed to their continuous popularity into the twenty-first century. Kunio’s article in the Journal of the Society for American Music studies the role that nostalgia played in the reception of the première of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West in New York City’s Italian American newspapers. Examination of nostalgia in other musical settings has resulted in an article on Tōru Takemitsu’s Nostalghia, a memorial composition for Andrei Tarkovsky named after his film, as well as his recent book Joe Hisaishi’s Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro, published as part of Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 Japan series.
For more information visit Confluence Concerts or the website of Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野.
Teiya Kasahara’s performance is made possible through a generous gift from Linda and Michael Hutcheon.
“The Ballad of Chō-chō san reimagines and re-instills the original Japanese cultural inspiration appropriated for this work by elevating the Japanese folk songs quoted in the opera, fore-fronting the Japanese language, and various Japanese instruments, mostly created electronically.”
Interview with curator Marion Newman and creator Teiya Kasahara (Feb 26, 2021):
“Madama Butterfly is a divisive opera that people feel strongly about. There are many issues to unpack in the work, but we can lose sight of nuance when we reduce the discussion to ‘should be performed’ or ‘should never be performed.’ Amplified Opera is excited to be involved in this symposium because it will lean into the challenging conversations around Madama Butterfly and shed light on some of the many possible pathways forward for this work.”
*Fully staged production changed to a filmed concert, due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions in Ontario, Canada.