The American short novel “Madame Butterfly” was dramatized by the famous director David Belasco in 1900. However, Belasco changed the ending of the play during the premiere season. That addition was the “death” of a main character, Madame Butterfly. In the novel, she “tried” to kill herself by the sword, but then stopped for her baby and her life. The “new ending” became a standard and Puccini also used this for his opera. Belasco thought that a sentimental theme and a poetic world would be able to be represented freshly only by emphasizing realism strictly. Through the tragedy of a distant foreign woman, in order to smartly handle the issue of female independence and liberation, Belasco made use of Madame Butterfly’s speech and the exotic appeal of the bodily expression “beauty of death,” introduced to him by Japanese actress Sadayakko. Belasco succeeded to make the stage more exotic and more poetic by appointing actress Bates who was good at comedy, not tragedy.
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