Publication of Madama Butterfly

Madama Butterfly is an opera in Italian by Giacomo Puccini, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on a play by David Belasco, which was in turn drawn from a short story by John Luther Long. Set in Nagasaki, Japan, it tells of the young geisha Cio-Cio-San, who marries the American naval officer Pinkerton, believing the marriage is a lasting one, while he treats it as a temporary arrangement. When he returns with an American wife years later, she takes her own life. The first performance at La Scala in Milan was a failure, but Puccini revised the work, and it was a success a few months later. It is one of the most frequently performed operas worldwide.

Open on the timeline