Madama Butterfly

In the 2021-2022 Season, the stage of the Sala Principal de Les Arts witnessed one of Puccini's most famous operas, the one with which he began his first foray into exotic worlds: Madama Butterfly.

Madama Butterfly was one of the first denunciations of colonialism, supremacist arrogance and the laws of difference in lyrical art. It reflects the unreality of love and the submissive role of women at the time.

The literary background to Madama Butterfly is to be found in Madame Crysanthème (1887) by Pierre Loti. John Luther Long was inspired by this earlier work, from which he changed his happy ending and the name of the protagonist, Chrysanthemum, to that of Butterfly.

The premiere of the work in 1904 at the Teatro alla Scala was not well received, forcing Puccini to withdraw the opera and revise it, producing up to five versions. The final version was presented to great acclaim just three months later.

Pinkerton, a lieutenant in the United States Navy, announces his impending marriage to a beautiful geisha named Cio-cio-san (Madama Butterfly). The scene is flooded with colour with the arrival of the bride and the guests.

The joy of the ceremony ends with the appearance of a fanatical Bonzo, Cio-cio-san's uncle, who rebukes her for renouncing her faith and incites the relatives to disown her. Pinkerton comforts Butterfly.

When he returns to Japan two years later, he is accompanied by his American wife, Kate. Both hope to take their son with them.

Cio-cio-san hands over the child on the condition that Pinkerton himself asks for it. Butterfly, now alone, says a few prayers and, after saying goodbye to her son, commits suicide. Before her suicide, she sings "With honour dies who cannot preserve life with honour".

In her metamorphosis from chrysanthemum to butterfly, Madama Butterfly will spread her 20th century wings into a new era. Towards a new way of looking at races, women and human dignity.