Huang Ruo, who wrote the music for the operatic adaptation of David Henry Hwang’s play, says its exploration of race, gender and power still resonates today.
The question from the Chinese-born composer Huang Ruo came out of the blue: Would David Henry Hwang, the American playwright, consider adapting his Broadway hit “M. Butterfly” for the opera stage?
It was 2013, and Huang, who had worked with Hwang on an Off Broadway revival of “The Dance and the Railroad,” was eager to collaborate again. The playwright agreed, and in late July, almost a decade after their first conversation, “M. Butterfly” had its premiere at Santa Fe Opera.
Like the play, the opera tells the story of René Gallimard, a civil servant at the French embassy in Beijing, who falls in love with Song Liling, a Chinese opera singer who seems to be the ideal woman. Gallimard eventually discovers that Song has been a man — and a spy — all along.
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