The Welsh National Opera has just announced that it will offer four online lectures on “Issues relevant to a contemporary audience” in addition to its new production of Giacomo Puccini's “Madama Butterfly”.

The titles are “Modern Slavery”, “Reinventing Narratives”, “The Long Arm of Imperialism” and “Women: Who Tells Our Stories?”.

The literary scholar Priyamvada Gopal has also been announced as a speaker.

The Cambridge professor of post-colonial studies sometimes insults her critics as white Suprematists.

Gina Thomas

Features correspondent based in London.

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Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Racial Equality Commission, has described her as a "scoundrel who thrives by bullying other people of color."

Gopal is regularly accused of political correctness in the conservative press.

It hardly needs the opera house's explanations to make it clear that the lecture series obeys the spirit of ubiquitous wokeness.

This approach is by no means original in the case of “Madama Butterfly”.

Puccini has regularly been held up against cultural appropriation - in the sense of Edward Said's concept of the fascination for the exoticism of the Orient, which is characterized by western arrogance. And directors have long interpreted the story of the geisha Cho Cho San in the light of the discussion about sexual exploitation and imperialism. As a result, some tenors are reluctant to sing the role of American naval officer Pinkerton because they could be booed at the end. Puccini himself was concerned that he had exaggerated the features of the "ugly American" and modified them when revising the first version, just as he also weakened the stereotyping of the Japanese.

It is difficult to interpret the image of Cho Cho Sans and Pinkerton's little son, who plays with the American flag in the last scene, other than as a criticism of imperialism. There is also hardly an opera composer who has addressed the fate of women trapped in social constraints as intensely as Puccini.

The Welsh National Opera criticizes the fact that most female opera characters are victims of their circumstances and those of them who do have power are portrayed as monsters. "Madama Butterfly" was premiered in 1904 at the height of the British Empire. Many would only have started with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement to deal with the role of the empire and its lasting effect. Taking “Madama Butterfly” as an opportunity to catch up on British history still seems far-fetched: Japan was not part of the Empire.