Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly

The Tuesday before last, Ying Ying and I headed to see Madama Butterfly over at the State Theatre. It was raining like ass (I seem to have an affinity for that word these days), but it wasn't heavy when I left the office and took the tram down.

Bought the program for $15 (still cheaper than what I paid for Wicked and The Rocky Horror Show), and when we went in, we got this mini flyer that said that the lady playing Butterfly (or Cio-Cio San, the Japanese lady of the title) was replaced by another lady.

Now, I'm all for understudies getting their time in the light, but I didn't pay $90 to see the replacement.

Anyway, before the show started, this guy came out and told us that the actress advertised was down with a throat infection (or something), and that the current lady has played Butterfly a few years back.

[So at least they didn't give us the understudy.]

Our seats were awesome (in the balcony, of course). We could see the surtitles (I dunno what's with the 'sur'; I always thought it was 'sub') clearly, and the stage, and the orchestra (which is always cool in my book).

The show was lovely. The storyline's basically proof that American men are pigs. In a nutshell, it's about this military man, Pinkerton (whose name sounds British, by the way) marrying this very, very young and very beautiful Japanese girl, Butterfly (of the title) so that he can have nice time if he docks at port again (in other words, he married her just for the heck of it). He promises her that he will be back by spring; unfortunately, three years have gone by and there's no sight of him.

Up till then, she's still hopeful that he will come back, because she had his baby (oooo yes, he knocked her up. But he didn't know). As the show goes on, her hopes are dashed, and Pinkerton returns (with his new AMERICAN wife) to adopt Butterfly's child (because it's still kinda his) and take the boy back to America.

So in the end, she gives the boy up, and she commits suicide.

[It is all very emotional.]

See, kids? This is why we Asian girls should not have white boyfriends. They will get us pregnant and adopt our babies and then we'll be forced to commit suicide because we can't kill our nagging relatives ('cuzza that whole 'filial piety' crap).