This winter season starts with an early example of Western self-flagellation (a form of inverted racism, I think), Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini (c. 1904), a co-production of Finnish National Opera and Gothenburg Opera.This was the third version I've seen, and probably the best. The director Yoshi Oida does his best with the material available, the costumes are delightful, and the sets just as I like: they do much with very little, nor was there anything wrong with the music or the performance. But from a Japanese perspective the opera is hideous.

I won't list things that are wrong (everything), nor things that are not absolutely fallacious (some) which would be far easier. I don't know if we have John Luther Long or Pierre Loti to thank for the ignorance, or the writer of the play which Puccini saw, or Puccini himself, or the librettists... But a geisha of late Meiji era, even if she was just fifteen, can't have been as naive as Cio-Cio-San (sung by Hyeseoung Kwon) unless she was seriously mentally deficient - which could be why her okiya was so eager to be rid or her. Nor can I believe an American wife would have been willing to adopt her husband's mixed-race bastard, but what wouldn't a composer do to wring a few tears from a conceited and sentimental audience...

Fortunately the second act (with Un bel dì vedremo) is better than the first one which happens in a kind of Mikado-land, so that one leaves in a good mood.