Madam Butterfly and a pointless discussion about colonialism

Welsh National Opera’s new version of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly opens today. To help audiences understand the opera’s historical significance this week the producers staged an online discussion, ‘The Long Arm of Imperialism.’ 

It was chaired by professor Priyamvada Gopal who teaches postcolonial studies at Cambridge. She began by reminding us that many of the greatest operas in the canon were written in the 19^th century, ‘when 85 per cent of the earth was, in some form or other, annexed to the cultural project…so there is no culture untouched by that project.’

In addition, she said, the concept of west-versus-east was a creation of colonialism:

‘The familiar categories of the west and the east…are categories that really only emerged in the 18^th and 19th centuries as a consequence of the imperial project.’

What an odd theory. Most historians would point out that the gulf between the east and the west was active at least 2,500 years ago during the Persian wars of the 5th century BC.