Geisha Q&A

Questions posed by a Soprano to Stage Director

Brian Clay Luedloff in preparation for 

LVO's Madama Butterfly.

Q2. How much training as a geisha has Cio-Cio San had?
 
Presumably taken into the geisha house as an orphaned child (or sold to the house by her parents) she may have been  there from age 5 on; at age 15 we know that she is already accomplished in her skills, so I think five to ten years of training would be about right.

Q1. How aware is she about what happens to other geisha that have married Americans? 
Very often other geisha, if abandoned, would have had too much shame to return to the same geisha house; more likely they would go to a different city and take up in a new house, so word of their abandonment would be rare. If she had heard other stories of geisha being abandoned by their American suitors she is probably too young to think it would happen to her.  She is at once pragmatic and a dreamer.

Q3. I am also trying to answer questions about exactly how naive Cio Cio San is. I also want to find some specific points in the score where her geisha training is evident, in conversation with Sharpless, Goro, Yamadori, etc. 

We know from Goro that she was bought (possibly sight unseen), as he procures Japanese brides for many young sailors.  Most of the evidence of her geisha training is in Act I, when she asks the other geisha to confirm the validity of her past ("Vero?/Vero!") and in "Che tua madre" when she explains to her small child that the consul Sharpless thinks that they will
have to return to begging in the streets, where she will perform her geisha dance again.  Better clues lie in the source material, the short story by John Luther Long and the play by David Belasco.
 
Q4. She is very strong at a young age. She was trained as a geisha to survive and become self sufficient. Why would marriage be the option? How would Goro have convinced her, or was it part of the price of becoming "independent"? 
Well, she is trained to be subservient, and has learned survival as a result of that subservience.  Geisha were very often married to rich men; owning a geisha of your own was a status symbol among the Japanese wealthy class.  A geisha had a narrow window of opportunity, while still young and beautiful (and, presumably, a virgin) to marry a wealthy man.  The alternative was a life of serving as geisha to many patrons over a lifetime, so marriage, particularly to an American naval officer, would be quite a prize for a young geisha!

Q 5. Did she already have issues with some aspects of Japanese life/men because of what her father had to do, making an American husband more appealing? 

She seems just as infatuated with the foreign aspect of the marriage as Pinkerton.  He laughs, speaks, walks differently. I think she's 15 and totally smitten with the handsome  American; the only Japanese men she likely knows are patrons of the geisha house, generally not eligible for marriage, or undesirable by virtue of age or poverty.  She has clearly romanticized what her American life will be; but she does not entirely abandon her Japanese nature or culture.  She reacts with great shame when the Bonze accuses her of  heresy; the end of the opera demonstrates her devotion to Japanese tradition.

While  some productions have Cio-Cio-San in American dress for the last two acts, I think she  knows what she's selling; that's why she tells Suzuki to get the obi in which she was married, because when Pinkerton returns she wants him to see her as she was on their wedding night.  She does welcome Sharpless in act II to "this American home" but aside  from a few trappings (American whiskey, a small American flag) she likely does not have particular knowledge or experience of American culture.

Q6. Does her relationship with Suzuki begin prior to the marriage, or is the strength of the relationship because Suzuki only knows her in this setting and watches her demise slowly over 3 years? 

I believe Suzuki is an older geisha, far beyond the age to marry or even perform basic geisha duties; I think Butterfly takes her with her as a servant as a kindness and out of affection for an older geisha who likely helped train her.  If there is not a personal loyalty between them Suzuki would have little reason to stay in Act II when they are penniless.