On October 16 and 17, 1929, Mme. Tamaki Miura (1884-1946), Japan’s first prima donna, gave two brilliant recitals on Kaua‘i, the first at the Makaweli Community House, where she was accompanied by Mrs. Sinclair Robinson, and the latter at the
On October 16 and 17, 1929, Mme. Tamaki Miura (1884-1946), Japan’s first prima donna, gave two brilliant recitals on Kaua‘i, the first at the Makaweli Community House, where she was accompanied by Mrs. Sinclair Robinson, and the latter at the Tip Top Theater in Lihu‘e.
Both of her local programs featured a number of Japanese folk songs and the Aria from the great Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.
When she first met Puccini (1858-1924) at Rome in 1921, he brought her into his study and said, “It was on that piano, it was in this room that I composed Madame Butterfly, and now I have a real butterfly to sing the role.”
“And I am a butterfly,” she confided on Kaua‘i a few days before her performances. “I am here today, New York in a few weeks, then London, Paris, Rome, everywhere. I am the butterfly who has sung before kings and monarchs, presidents and potentates the world over.
“Song is the universal language, and as the first prima donna of Japan, I must give to the world of my ability so long as the world wants it. It will help my country and it will help my people.”
Yet, her country’s press reported her personal conduct as being far too assertive and even scandalous for a Japanese woman of her day, particularly when she divorced her first husband and abandoned her second for her musical career.
Miura made her operatic debut in Tokyo in 1911, and in 1915 in Boston, she first played the part of Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly, a role she would replicate some 2,000 times. She subsequently toured Europe and North America extensively before retiring to Japan in 1932. Her statue, and Puccini’s, stands in Nagasaki’s Glover Garden.
