‘M. Butterfly’ and ‘Madame Butterfly’ confront opera’s most uncomfortable fantasy.
Even if I hadn’t already known that David Henry Hwang’s 1988 play inverts and triumphs over the unabashed racism of “Madame Butterfly,” San Francisco Playhouse’s production gave me an unmissable clue not to take the coy protestations of opera singer Song at face value. She’s actually a man, played by Edric Young — even if white French diplomat Gallimard (Dean Linnard) can’t or won’t acknowledge it.
The transcendent, mysterious power of Hwang’s play, directed by Bridgette Loriaux, is that it aims higher than low-hanging fruit. It’s easy to say Puccini’s opera of Asian female self-sacrifice to white male callousness is racist. It’s easy to make fun of Gallimard and his real-life inspiration, Bernard Boursicot, a diplomat who was convicted of espionage for sharing state secrets with the man disguised as a woman who seduced him.