Madama Butterfly is a tragic opera in three acts by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini . It uses a libretto (text) in Italian by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on the American play Madame Butterfly by David Belasco, from a story by John Luther Long. Long’s story was apparently partly based on real events. The opera received its first performance in a two-act version at La Scala, Milan, Italy, on Feb. 17, 1904. The three-act revision was first given in Brescia, Italy, on May 28, 1904.
The story of Madama Butterfly takes place in Nagasaki, Japan, about 1900. Cio-Cio-San (soprano), the Madama Butterfly of the title, is a geisha (young Japanese woman trained to entertain men) who falls in love with an American naval officer, B. F. Pinkerton (tenor). Pinkerton marries the 15-year-old Cio-Cio-San in a Japanese ceremony. Pinkerton must leave Japan with his ship, but he promises to return when the robins are nesting. After Pinkerton has gone, the young woman gives birth to his son, who is known as Dolore (Sorrow). Three years later, Pinkerton sends a letter to the American consul Sharpless (baritone) saying that he has married an American. Pinkerton returns to Nagasaki with his American wife, Kate (mezzo soprano). The heartbroken Cio-Cio-San agrees to give them the child. She then commits ritual suicide. A guilt-ridden Pinkerton finds her dead.
Loading the player...Madama Butterfly: Un bel di
Puccini tried to give Madama Butterfly an Oriental flavor by basing some of his score on Japanese music. He quotes from “The Star-Spangled Banner” in one of Pinkerton’s numbers. The opera’s best-known passage is the exquisite aria “Un bel di” (“One fine day”) in Act II, in which the heroine describes to her maid Suzuki what it will be like the day Pinkerton finally returns to her. The opera offers several other memorable moments, including the soaring love duet between Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton that ends Act I and the “flower duet” in Act II in which Cio-Cio-San and Suzuki—having spotted Pinkerton’s ship in Nagasaki’s harbor—decorate her house with cherry blossoms in anticipation of the lieutenant’s arrival.
