Cherry Blossoms and Ritual Suicide

Monday, May 20, 1996

Puccini’s "Madama Butterfly" has it all – great music, gripping
drama and colorful characters. UCLA alumnus Christopher Harlan
brings the masterpiece to life, directing a revival for L.A.
Opera.By John Mangum

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Christopher Harlan knows exactly how to direct an opera.

With years of experience, the graduate of UCLA’s theater
department has had plenty of opportunities to develop his vision of
the way a director ought to approach his task.

"The job of a director is basically communication," Harlan says.
"It’s not just ‘Stand here, pick up that prop, go over there and
die.’ It’s first and foremost figuring out, ‘Why did the composer
and the librettist write this piece? What was it they wanted to
say?’"

He brings this clear-headed approach to Los Angeles Music Center
Opera’s production of Giacomo Puccini’s "Madama Butterfly," which
the company revives tonight at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Harlan directed the work in L.A. Opera’s first revival of this
production in February of 1994. Esteemed soprano Maria Ewing was
originally slated to assume the title role, as she had when L.A.
Opera premiered this "Butterfly" in 1991 directed by Ian Judge. But
she was replaced by Galina Gorchakova, and the change gave Harlan
some elbow room to infuse the production with his own ideas.

"When Maria Ewing canceled, I was told that I really ­ not
had free reign ­ but I still certainly had to make something
new with the new cast that was coming in, because the director had
made specific choices, originally, that would only work for Maria,"
Harlan says. "So, without Maria, I had to do something different,
which I did, and so it’s that version that I’m redoing now."

His version approaches the piece as a culture clash that could
only have happened at the turn of the century. Harlan sees the
opera’s tragic end as the result of misunderstandings between the
Americans, Sharpless and Pinkerton, and the Japanese, with
Butterfly the foremost among them.

"A tragedy happens when two cultures come in contact with each
other and there isn’t enough time for them to understand each
other," Harlan explains. "Pinkerton doesn’t understand the
ramifications of what he’s doing. He’s a teenager on shore leave,
and for $1.95 he gets a great house and a woman. It’s terrific; you
go for it. He doesn’t understand how she takes it or how she will.
The cause of her suicide doesn’t even enter his head."

Harlan plays up this misunderstanding by emphasizing the details
of the interaction between the Japanese and American characters in
the story. He shows their different customs and rules of etiquette,
pointing out how foreign those of one culture seem to the
other.

"I have all of these things with walking around inside, leaving
your shoes on," Harlan says. "Things of Sharpless sitting on tables
because there are no comfortable places to sit. Things that we, as
Americans, just take for granted. Yeah, even kitchen tables. We sit
on tables all of the time, but the Japanese think that’s such a
strange thing.

"Even the simplest thing is shaking a hand. It’s completely
foreign. Pinkerton goes to shake someone’s hand. They shy off. The
Japanese are insulted because he’s being so confrontational. He’s
insulted because they don’t even have the common courtesy to shake
his hand. It’s all a misunderstanding of cultures, and that’s what
leads to this tragedy."

This attention to detail is something that makes productions
directed by Harlan memorable. Last season, he contributed his
talents to a successful "Otello" with Palcido Domingo and June
Anderson, successful because the activity on stage never interfered
with the drama, only enhanced it.

This kind of direct communication was something that impressed
Puccini when he first encountered David Belasco’s play "Madame
Butterfly" in London in 1900. The composer spoke little English,
but the evening left a deep enough impression to compel him to
immortalize Belasco’s work as one of his greatest operas.

"Puccini clearly was moved to tears seeing a play that he didn’t
understand, but it was done in such a way that he could follow
precisely what was going on even though he didn’t understand a word
of the text," Harlan says.

Harlan’s ideal as a director is to make a similar experience
possible for anyone attending one of his productions. His desire to
communicate the drama is something that a score as accessible and
straightforward as Puccini’s allows him to achieve.

"Madama Butterfly" contains several short musical ideas, or
motives, many of which show the composer trying to incorporate or
imitate traditional Japanese music. These motives and their
associations with Butterfly and other characters, like the
matchmaker Goro, help to pace and convey the drama.

"His motivic structure isn’t as strict for example as Wagner’s,
where every time you hear that motif you have to see the sword or
something like that. (‘Madama Butterfly’) opens with this phrase,"
Harlan says, humming a brief melody, "frenzy in activity ­ and
the first person you see really is Goro being frenzied in activity.
You can’t really say it’s Goro’s theme because it happens at times
when he’s not on stage, when nothing even refers to him. So, it’s
just kind of a general idea of panic, chaos, hysteria and I try to
put on the stage as much as possible."

Harlan doesn’t always feel the need to underline the music with
stage action. He feels that some of the motives speak for
themselves.

"There are times when there’s a definite motive," Harlan says.
"It’s an onomatopoeia kind of device of the robins that come back,
and you keep hearing them all the way through. In ‘Un bel dì’
(Butterfly’s well-known aria in Act 2) you have this theme coming
up, and rather than having her looking around, you just let that
go, because that’s kind of like a comment on what she’s saying. So
to illustrate that would be, I think, a bit much."

While Harlan knows that his role as director is important, he
goes to great lengths to make sure that whatever he puts on the
stage does not interfere with the music. He also hopes that people
will, above all, be receptive to what he has done and look at the
details not for their own sake but as part of something larger, the
production itself.

"Even though you don’t understand every word of the text, it’s
so apparent, and (Puccini is) such a terrific manipulator in the
way he writes a melody that if you just open yourself up to it, it
will move you," Harlan says. "Don’t worry about ‘That costume looks
stupid’ or ‘Ugh! Come on! She doesn’t look Japanese’ or ‘The
lighting is too dark’ or ‘I don’t understand a word they’re saying’
or ‘Oh, I know that aria, and I’ve heard it sung better on
recordings’ or ‘Well, that’s very nice, but it isn’t as hip as "M
Butterfly," no interesting twists at the end.’ Take it for what it
is, and it’s magic."

This "Butterfly" was his second directing assignment with L.A.
Opera when he tackled it in 1994, his first having been a revival
of Puccini’s "Tosca" in 1992. He graduated from UCLA in 1980, but
had been thinking about a career directing opera even before
that.

"Between high school and college, my mom sent me to Europe for
the summer, and that’s where I got the opera bug," Harlan
remembers. "I was a big Wagner fanatic at the time ­ which is
not opera, it’s Wagner, you know, it’s that special thing ­ so
I went to Bayreuth that summer."

Bayreuth, a small town in southeastern Germany where composer
Richard Wagner built his home and a theater to stage his works, is
the Mecca for many pilgrims in search of the musical version of a
religious experience. Harlan also spent a month in Munich, where he
heard a wide range of major operatic works for the first time. The
experience changed his life.

"I was going to go to law school," Harlan says. "I was an
English major. And two years into it I thought, ‘No, I don’t know
about this.’

"There was an afternoon when Ray Bradbury came to Ackerman Union
to give a little noontime chat, and at the end of the hour he said,
‘If you remember nothing of what I’ve said today, just think about
this: if there’s something you really want to do, you have to go
out and do it. If you’re going to be a lawyer or a doctor or a
politician because that’s what your parents want so that you can
support them in their old age, unless the passion is there, you
probably won’t make it, and even if you do, you won’t be happy. But
if there’s something that you really want to do, do it, and I
guarantee you’ll succeed. And I’ve been saying this to college kids
for about 30 years, and I have yet to be proven wrong.’"

Bradbury’s advice clearly resonated with Harlan. The director
repeats it with a conviction indicating the impact it had on his
life. It was this speech that put the seal on his decision to make
opera his career.

"That night, I went home and said, ‘Mom, guess what, I’m going
to direct opera!’ ‘Like hell,’ says she, and so we talked about it
for a while, and she let me change the major."

After making the move from English to theater, Harlan
encountered a rigorous program that gave him a thorough
understanding of his subject. He stresses the role the department
had in preparing him to direct once he graduated.

"In terms of theater, I think it’s the best in the country,"
Harlan says. "The curriculum to get the major for theater arts
means you have to take a course in everything ­ a course in
stagecraft, a course in costuming, acting, movement, dance, the
whole thing, directing, lighting, set design.

"I think if you want to be an actor it could be a waste of your
time, because not many people who want to go out and be the next
Marlon Brando are interested in how to build a prop. But in terms
of directing, I think it’s invaluable because that way you can talk
to the lighting designer, you can talk to the grips and the
electricians in their language and not just say, ‘Well I want
something kind of, you know, well something dramatic over
there.’"

After graduating, Harlan worked as an assistant stage manager
for the now-defunct Los Angeles Opera Theater, which staged
performances at the Wilshire Ebell Theater from 1979 to 1985.
Harlan started as a volunteer, working as an assistant stage
manager on Richard Strauss’ "Ariadne auf Naxos" in the fall of
1980, and quickly made the jump to assistant directing the next
season. When L.A. Opera Theater closed its doors in 1985, Harlan
went to the then-fledgling L.A. Music Center Opera, and was brought
on as an assistant stage manager.

Not all of Harlan’s work has been in Los Angeles. He has worked
in Seattle, Berlin, at Chicago’s Lyric Opera and at the Wagner
Festival in Bayreuth. He spent four summers there as a stage
assistant, working with renowned director Patrice Chéreau, who
was mounting a new production of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle.

Chéreau’s controversial approach to the ‘Ring’ removed the
action from the mists of German prehistory and put it in the
industrial revolution. Harlan cites it as an example of a valid
approach to opera that may not be the first solution that springs
to mind, and he clearly admires Chéreau’s achievement.

"His whole concept was based on his lack of capability," Harlan
says. "The music that opens ‘Rheingold’ (the first opera in the
‘Ring’ cycle) is such a perfect depiction of nature that Patrice
felt he was incapable of putting anything on stage that would match
it, because it’s perfect, it’s perfect. It’s something only for the
imagination. So no matter what you see on stage, you’ll be
disappointed, because it can’t live up to the perfection of the
music.

"And so he said, ‘No matter what I put up there, it won’t be as
beautiful. So let’s do the opposite. Let’s make it as ugly as
possible.’ So that’s why after this incredible depiction of the
Rhine, the curtain goes up and you have a hydroelectric dam, ugly
as sin. And it smacks you in the face to say, ‘This is what we’ve
done to it, people.’ The connection between the Germans and the
Rhine river, it’s such a strong thing. The Rhine is the single most
polluted waterway in the world. It’s the basis of their mythology
and their connection with nature, and they’ve completely destroyed
it."

"It was fascinating because everything he did was with complete
conviction, complete passion, and nothing ever contradicted the
text or the spirit of the music."

Harlan feels that this kind of approach is valid precisely
because it does not go against the grain of the dramatic work.
Wagner left very specific stage directions in his scores along with
massive dissertations on how to perform his works, but in the end
he wanted succeeding generations of performers to do something
different.

Harlan takes this approach with "Butterfly," another work where
the composer left detailed directions. He feels that the director
should approach the work from the same interpretive stance that the
musicians and conductor take.

"’Butterfly’ has very specific stage directions as well, but
read them and interpret them the way you read the notes and
interpret them and you read the text and interpret it," Harlan
says. "The way I approach it is taking this idea Frank Lloyd Wright
once told his student. Someone asked him, ‘How do I design a
house?’ And his answer was, ‘Never ask how. Only ask why, because
if you ask the why, the how takes care of itself.’"

But no matter what Harlan does, in the end, it has to
communicate with the audience. He hopes that veteran opera-goers
and those coming to the work for the first time will be open to
what he, and everyone else involved with tonight’s production,
brings to the stage.

"It’s colorful, it has terrific music, it’s an easy story to
follow. I think the important thing in going to any opera is just
opening yourself up to it, just letting the experience happen."

OPERA: L.A. Opera presents Giacomo Puccini’s "Madama Butterfly"
with Catherine Malfitano and Luis Lima, directed by Christopher
Harlan. At the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion May 21, 24, 26, 29, June
4, 7 at 7:30 p.m. and June 1 at 2 p.m. TIX: $120-$22. $15 student
rush tickets available one hour before curtain. For more info.,
call (213) 972-8001.

Soprano Catherine Malfitano assumes the title role in Puccini’s
"Madama Butterfly" directed by Christopher Harlan

Director Christopher Harlan