Theater and the Arts by Franklin W. Liu

In John Luther Long’s 1903 novel “Madame Butterfly” American Navy sailor, Lt. B.F. Pinkerton promised his 15-year-old Japanese Geisha girl-bride that he would return for her when the robins nest.

In 1842, Alfred Tennyson wrote that in the Spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Heading home, boarding from Davis Square on the Red Line the other evening, Spring was keen on my mind mostly on ways to reduce my suffering from a runny nose and swollen, itchy watery eyes caused by hay fever. Sitting across from me, googoo-eyed with each other was a teenage couple, snuggling, totally consumed by love as if the whole rush-hour train was empty except for the two of them.

This display of rapturous love led me to think about Puccini’s 1904 opera “Madame Butterfly,” and a 1957, six Oscar Award-winning movie “Sayonara” starring Marlon Brando.

Giacomo Puccini’s opera was inspired by John Luther Long’s novel. The music of the 1904 original version was by Puccini with libretto in Italian by Luigi Illica and Jiuseppe Giacosa.

Although Puccino thought it to be his best work, its first presentation in

La Scala, Milan was a fiasco, inciting audience hoots and catcalls.

Three years and one revision later in 1907, it was a resounding success when it was presented in English at the Metropolitan Opera in Washington. “Madame Butterfly” now ranks as a world favorite.

The opera was set in Nagasaki, Japan. In Act I, Lt.B.F. Pinkerton is captivated by a Kimono-clad Geisha-girl named Cio-Cio-San.

He proposes to her, which presents the trauma of culture clash.

She sees the marriage as binding, as it required her to abandon her ancestral faith and tradition against the dire disapproval of her family. This union was considered such an egregious breach of family, religion and culture that it led to her permanent, painful ostracization.

Pinkerton consoles his distraught bride as they, nonetheless, start a life together. Soon however, he returns with the Navy back to America alone. Left behind, Cio-Cio-San bore him a son.

In Act II, three years later, Pinkerton had been away in America. Although upon leaving, he’d promised his daintily pretty, butterfly-like girl-bride that he would return to her tender embraces as soon as the robins nest again.

But, although three springs had passed, Cio-Cio-San waits dutifully and faithfully for his return.

When Pinkerton does return, he brought with him his American wife.  In desperation, Pinkerton goes along with a deception that the American woman had come to adopt the child.

But Butterfly soon realizes the truth that Pinkerton had deserted her. Stricken with grief, feeling powerless and through tears, she agrees to give up her son.

Knowing she has lost her lover and will lose her son, she takes her father’s dagger with the inscription: To die with honor when one can no longer live with honor.

In the story’s final deception, Cio-Cio-San gives her son a doll and an American flag to play with, then sends him out of the room as she ends her own life by committing hara-kiri.

Although the beginning of love brings delight, the end of it can bring destruction. Love certainly took its unpredictable course in a 1957 movie, “Sayonara” directed by Joshua Logan, starring Marlon Brando and Miiko Taka with music by Irving Berlin.

The movie’s theme of forbidden interracial romance was based on a novel written by James A. Michener.

Marlin Brando plays Lloyd Gruver, an ace fighter pilot, the son of a four-star general, who was stationed in Korea with Red Buttons as an airman in his squadron.

Both men were soon transferred to Kobe, Japan by order of a three-star Army general, who wants to arrange a marriage between the ace pilot and his daughter.

Gruver felt constrained by a life of expectations within the framework of strict army regulations. In 1951, at the end of U.S. occupation of Japan, the Army enforced a strict, no fraternization rule to forbid American military men from mixing with the local women.

Gruver attended a few Japanese cabaret shows and was smitten by the troupe’s star performer who was a girl as beautiful as a porcelain doll.

Gruver ends up falling in love with this exotic, celebrated Japanese cabaret entertainer, rejecting the love of a general’s daughter. 

Miiko Taka who plays Gruver’s love-interest was caught in her own dilemma, initially rejecting Gruver because Americans had killed her father during the war, leading her to hate all Americans.

The cabaret troupe also enforced a similar, no fraternization rule. After some hesitancy and a few misunderstandings, she and Gruver overcame cultural barriers and fall thrillingly for each other. All the while, pledging to keep their illegal relationship a secret. 

Rumors fly. The Air Force, State Department, Congressmen all pressure Gruver, a much admired war hero, from marrying this Japanese girl.

A direct order was given to immediately transfer Gruver back home to the United States in order to separate Gruver from his Japanese fiancée.  Things came to a head with the threat of a court martial hanging over Gruver, leading one of Gruver’s Army buddy to exclaim out loud, “What does it all mean?

The eternal struggle, sex, and the New York Yankees?”

The movie ends with news of pending congressional legislation allowing American soldiers to bring their Japanese brides home to live in America. Progress.

In “As You Like It,” Shakespeare wrote: Sweet lovers love the Spring/Spring is a sparkling season for renewal.

What better way is there to let friendship and love blossom by inviting someone special to an opera, play, movie or simply rent an excellent tape to watch together.