Madame Butterfly Is Finally Being Done In The Actual Languages The Characters Speak – And You Can See It In Little Tokyo

Madame Butterfly is a standard, remaining one of the most popular operas in the world more than a century after its creation. But there’s one central question about the cross-culture love story that drove opera fan/actor/director Josh Shaw nuts:

How in the world is this American naval officer communicating with this Japanese girl?

Shaw, who was playing the lead character of Pinkerton when it first dawned on him, said that he realized, “There’s no way in the world we speak the same language.”

The original opera’s answer was “Italian,” but Shaw — also the artistic director of the Pacific Opera Project — had an idea. It took years to put it in practice, but now he’s doing it: Madama Butterfly, in both English and Japanese, at a Little Tokyo theater.

published on April 8, 2019