“If I weren’t Japanese, I don’t think I would have been asked to direct this piece as often as I have,” says Matthew Ozawa, Lyric Opera’s chief artistic officer. The 1904 Puccini opera Madama Butterfly has been continuously performed and adapted in the last century-plus — including by Ozawa, beginning in 2017, for companies around the country. 

Despite its classic status, the story raises more eyebrows today than it did in the early 20th century: Cio-Cio-San (the titular “butterfly”) is a 15-year-old Japanese geisha who falls for U.S. Navy lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton, but their romance turns into tragedy when he abandons her, ultimately driving her to suicide. Beyond the thorny plot is a greater concern about the opera’s impossible-to-avoid Orientalism — both the opera and the short story on which it was based were written by Western men born in the 19th century. So, during the pandemic, Ozawa decided to unpack the opera and see if he could rebuild it, accounting for the racism of its era without alienating modern audiences. 

A California native who spent his high-school years in Singapore, Ozawa was introduced to opera at an early age, singing in the children’s choruses in Carmen, La Boheme, and Tosca at San Diego Opera. His heritage has given him a very specific perspective about the complexities of race: “I’m half Japanese, half Caucasian,” says Ozawa, who lives in Lake View. “I’m fourth-generation Japanese-American. My father was born in an internment camp — the family was incarcerated in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, during World War II.” 

For this new approach on Butterfly, he came up with a clever conceit that explains the dated perspective: This onstage Japan is literally a fantasy, conjured by a white American with a virtual reality headset. The production premiered in 2023 in Cincinnati and has since has traveled to Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City before coming here, to Ozawa’s artistic home at the Lyric, where it opens March 14 and runs through April 12. 

When did you first encounter the issues baked into Madama Butterfly? 

I’ve been in the opera industry professionally for over 22 years and I will say, up until working on a Butterfly, I had always felt welcomed by the industry. I didn’t quite realize that I was oftentimes the only Asian in many of the rooms where I was working, and for a long time, I was the only Asian opera director in the country. But around 2008 or 2009, I was working on a Butterfly and suddenly realized that no one on stage was Asian, yet everyone was pretending to be Japanese. Watching that, and watching the behavior of people backstage, was the first time I felt that maybe not all of opera welcomed me. People would come up to me and do squinty eyes and lots of fake bowing. 

Oof! Was this behavior from people who were trying to belittle you, or were these white people who thought they were being funny while they were really being offensive? I’m not trying to excuse it; I’m trying to process why people would do that to a fellow professional.

To what you’re saying, it’s not necessarily malicious. But absolutely, even if you bring a Japanese expert into the room, they can’t teach a lifetime of culture. And it still happens with Turandot, Pearl Fishers — when people are donning Fu Manchu beards, they’re inhabiting a world outside of their own, and they go towards the stereotype of what they think that is.

Your reworking of Butterflyreminds me of the incredible Shogunfrom two years ago, which was so thrilling. The original novel and the first TV adaptation, both about 50 years old, are another example of Western outsiders telling a story about Japan. But today, we can get an authentic new version, told by people from the culture being depicted. It feels like the same impulse that you had: to work with a team of incredible artists of East Asian heritage to reclaim your stories.

When we were creating our version, a number of other new productions of Butterfly were also being created by other Asian-Americans. One aspect of ours is very different: The entire design team are Japanese women. They felt like this character didn’t represent them, that she was someone else’s fantasy. You know, while Puccini honored aspects of Japanese culture and music within the fabric of the work, he never set foot in Japan. 

I understand that lots of opera companies around the world have been wrestling with Butterfly’s legacy. Why is that? Some might say to leave it in the dustbin of history.  

I feel an immense duty, as a Japanese-American, to reclaim, reimagine, and reignite this work — because it isn’t going to go away. It’s a beloved classic, and the music is the driving force. It’s so glorious and oftentimes seductive. People know that there are aspects in the text that are problematic, but they get lulled into the love story because of the music.

In this version, there’s not an actual human lieutenant named Pinkerton but a white guy in his 20s who’s obsessed with anime and video games. I imagine his fever-dream VR headset version of Japan really liberated the design team regarding sets, costumes, and lighting? 

Yes. In our production, Butterfly is a fantasy of a modern-day American guy. It means we can pay homage to elements of Japanese culture, architecture, art — but it’s not realism. We played on a lot of tropes of what Americans think. We asked people, “What’s your favorite thing about Japan?” They usually say they love sushi, pink lanterns, parasols, and postcards of Mount Fuji. We put all of that into the show. Simultaneously, we very purposefully set the production up to lure audiences into this Americanized fantasy. They’re immersed in it and excited by it, and when they come back after intermission, we flip everything on its head. This is when folks start to think about this piece in a different way. 

I imagine this reinterpretation has upset some traditionalists. Have you encountered that?

I don’t think the job of a stage director or an artist is to have everyone like the thing. We’re about creating experiences of transformation and discovery. But I’ll share this with you: I’ve received my first physical piece of hate mail. So yes, this production is not loved by everybody. This person who wrote me was a Caucasian male, and he was outraged. I received this thing last year and I grappled with it for a long time. As an artist, you put so much of yourself into the art, you become very vulnerable. As a team of Japanese Americans, you feel like you’re carrying the weight of your entire community. But in reading that hate mail, I came to understand it’s more about that person’s lived experiences and limited views. Someone in the industry said, “Matthew, you need to frame it, because it means you made it! Clearly people are feeling things.” And I think it’s good for people to grapple with that.