The Unspoken Narratives

This series is based on Puccini's famous opera Madama Butterfly. Many of the greatest operas were composed from the 19th century to the early 20th century. To this day we see them performed in different parts of the world and at different points in time. This was undoubtedly the period when colonialism was at its height worldwide, and in 1880, the enormous continent of Africa was still mostly made up of independent states and societies. While the whole of Africa was rapidly colonized by many European powers in the decade from 1904 to 1914, Ethiopia and Liberia were the only two independent African states left by 1914. The rest of the continent was colonized, divided between Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, and Spain. Mainland Southeast Asia was conquered mostly by France, Many pacific islands were occupied by the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and Britain.

The reason for this attempt because we need to understand that the way things are today, is determined by some fixed, iron historical railway track, we carry history in us, it's in the language we use, it's in the fiction we write, and we even parade these identifications. So these debates really need to take place.