Madama Butterfly is the tale of an innocent young geisha who falls in love with an American sailor. Cio-Cio-San gives up her religion and family to marry Pinkerton, but is then abandoned by him. She keeps faith that one day he will return and be reunited with her and the young son he has yet to meet. However, when he does come back into their lives, it is for a very different purpose.
It is sometimes said that the role of great art is to hold up a mirror to the society it portrays. In opera, Verdi’s La Traviata certainly matches that description as does the deep irony of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. So does Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly fit into the same category?
The scenario for Madama Butterfly was so far removed from the experience of its first audience that they would have thought that it had very little to do with their own lives. Indeed, when the opera opened at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 17 February 1904, Madama Butterfly was booed off the stage. The work that Puccini put into making Madama Butterfly as believable as possible, including his use of Japanese folk music, was initially lost on Italian opera lovers. Puccini however prevailed. Today, Madama Butterfly is adored all over the world.
