Madama Butterfly
By Giacomo Puccini
BROKEN WINGS
Puccini’s music in this timeless story of love and tragedy is widely considered some of the most achingly beautiful ever written.
A young Japanese woman who converts to Christianity, marries an American naval officer and then waits for his return—only to discover he has taken an American wife and intends to claim their child. The opera stages the systematic destruction of a woman who has surrendered everything—her religion, her family, her cultural identity—to a man who regards her as little more than a temporary domestic arrangement.
From this point forward, Butterfly chooses what is, for her, the only honorable solution.
After its famously terrible reception for the 1904 premiere, Puccini made substantial revisions through four more versions of the opera, finally creating the classic audiences know today. Madama Butterfly is one of the most performed operas in the world.
