Madama Butterfly

The short animation was an interresting and very effective way of taking a story that is hours long, and compressing it into minutes, without losing the emotion. I had never seen the actual opera, so I was very moved by this clip and experiencing the story for the first time. I found the use of sound quite interesting. In a normal opera, the characters would be singing. However, the animators decided to use the opera music as background music, like a soundtrack. This made the animation seem like it was lacking a dialogue. When watching it, this made me think of how much we can say and express of our emotions to another human being, without speaking a word. An interesting part of this clip was when the ship was coming and the music briefly changed to something a little bit more "fun," as opposed to the highly expressive and emotional music that is played throughout most of the piece. I view this as a way to show how much the father changed during his absense. While the opera started by portraying him as a very emotional, caring guy, when his ship came in, he was no longer the same person, although the mother was. The fish metaphor was interesting, but I didn't find it necessary. I think it was more of a way for the animators to symbolize her giving birth without showing her giving birth. The fish breaking out of his tank was like the baby coming into the new world. However, I am wondering if I missed any different meaning in the artists' intentions of that part.