The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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Chronology

CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 109

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true-to-life characters. While this poignant musical drama
was received coldly at its premiere in 1897, La Bohèmehas
become one of the best loved of nineteenth-century operas.
Another of Puccini’s operas, Madame Butterfly, offered
European audiences a timely, if moralizing, view of the
Western presence in Asia and one that personalized the
clash of radically different cultures. The story, which takes
place in Nagasaki in the years following the reopening of
Japanese ports to the West, begins with the wedding of a
young United States navy lieutenant to a fifteen-year-old
geisha (a Japanese girl trained as a social companion to
men) known as “Butterfly.” The American is soon forced
to leave with his fleet, while for three years Butterfly, now
the mother of his son, faithfully awaits his return. When,
finally, he arrives (accompanied by his new American
bride) only to claim the child, the griefstricken Butterfly
takes the only honorable path available to her: she
commits suicide. This tragic tale, which had appeared as
a novel, a play, and a magazine story, was based on a true
incident. Set to some of Puccini’s most lyrical music for
voice and orchestra, Madame Butterflyreflects the compos-
er’s fascination with Japanese culture, a fascination most

evident in his poetic characterization of the delicate

Butterfly. While neither the story nor the music of the

opera is authentically Japanese, its verismolies in its frank

(though poignant) account of the bitter consequences that

often accompanied the meeting of East and West.

Figure 30.29 JOHN AUGUSTUSandWASHINGTON AUGUSTUS ROEBLING,Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1869–1883. Currier and Ives print, 1877.

1830 French conquest of Algeria

1839–1850 Opium Wars in China

1848 antigovernment revolutions in France and

Central Europe

1853 beginning of Meiji rule in Japan

1860 unification of Italy

1861–1865 United States Civil War

1869 completion of the U.S. transcontinental

railroad

1871 unification of Germany