Madama Butterfly

East meets West with devastating consequences in Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Antonio Pappano conducts a stellar cast led by Ermonela Jaho in this deeply moving opera by Puccini. Cio-Cio-San, the young Japanese bride of the dashing American officer, Lieutenant Pinkerton, sees her romantic idyll shattered when he abandons her shortly after their wedding. She lives in the hope that one day he will return. 

Giacomo Puccini was captivated by David Belasco’s play Madame Butterfly (based on a popular short story by John Luther Long) when he saw it in London in 1900. He called upon the talents of librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (with whom Puccini had created La bohème and Tosca) to adapt the tragic story of Cio-Cio-San for the operatic stage. Although the premiere at La Scala in Milan in 1904 was poorly received, that same year Puccini revised and restaged the opera for a performance in Brescia, where it was a great success. Madama Butterfly quickly became a very popular opera among both performers and audiences, and remains one of Puccini’s most frequently performed works. 

Puccini drew inspiration from Japanese folk melodies to compose this score, one of the most evocative and moving in his oeuvre. In Act I, Cio-Cio-San expresses her radiant happiness in ‘Ancora un passo’, and the two lovers declare their love for one another with enthusiasm in the passionate duet ‘Viene la sera’. In Act II, the atmosphere grows increasingly tense, as in ‘Un bel dì vedremo’, when Cio-Cio-San longs for the ‘beautiful day’ when her husband will return to her. The romantic exoticism of European images of 19th-century Japan — an integral part of the character of Madama Butterfly — inspires Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s elegant production for the Royal Opera.