Madama Butterfly

Novella, play and opera

Puccini’s opera was adapted from David Belasco’s play Madame Butterfly, which in turn was based on the novella by John Luther Long and its sixteen-year old Japanese heroine, Cio-Cio-San (‘Butterfly’).

Harakiri

This is the true story of Cio-Cio-San, who marries the American marine officer Captain Pinkerton and has his child, only to be abandoned. The dramatic climax comes three years later, when Pinkerton and his new wife return to Japan to claim that child. Butterfly realises that what she believed to be a real marriage was merely an exotic adventure to Officer Pinkerton. Cio-Cio-San, alias Madama Butterfly, commits suicide by harakiri: ‘Better to die with honour’, she says, ‘than live with shame’.

East and West

Puccini’s composition, with its spellbinding counterpoint of East and West, interweaves leitmotifs evocative of Wagner with authentic Japanese melodies, which the composer studied extensively. Puccini himself considered Madama Butterfly to be his most emotive and expressive opera.

Wilson’s abstract aesthetic

Robert Wilson’s (direction, set and lighting) Madama Butterfly is abstract in its aesthetic and shuns sentimentality. Instead of pseudo-oriental kitsch and scuttling women, he recreates an authentically Asian dimension in how he renders time, with slow, minutely choreographed movements reminiscent of Japanese Nôh theatre. Wilson’s sublimely austere sets and costumes combine with powerful lighting that paints and sculpts the stage.