Madama Butterfly Study Guide - Pacific Opera Victoria

Butterfly Stories
Compiled by Beth “Opera Lady” Parker
Pittsburgh Opera
Les Mis by Puccini? Think of the possibilities…
More than one critic of Les Mis has pointed out the family resemblance between
many of Claude-Michel Schönberg’s melodies and Puccini’s music. It turns out
that one of the subjects Puccini was considering around 1902 was indeed Les
misérables! Victor Hugo’s novel had been published 40 years earlier and was
still a hot topic in Paris at the time, but Puccini fell in love with Butterfly’s story
instead.
The Star Spangled Banner
What’s more American than “The Star-Spangled Banner”, the US
national anthem? It seems the whole world knows it. But it wasn’t so
well known in 1904, when the opera premiered. For one thing,
America had not yet become a world power. And another: it didn’t
become the official anthem until 1931. Puccini quoted it no less than
five times in the opera—keep your ears open!
Salomea Krusceniska, the Butterfly from the first successful performance in Brescia on May 28, 1904.
Opening Night Fiasco
Madama Butterfly may be the world’s favorite opera today, but when it
premiered in Milan in February of 1904, it was the worst night of Puccini’s
professional life. Puccini’s publisher Giulio Ricordi wrote, “Growls, shouts,
groans, laughter, giggling, the usual single cries of bis [encore], designed
specially to excite the audience still more: these sum up the reception given by
the public of La Scala to Giacomo Puccini’s new work. After this pandemonium,
throughout which practically nothing could be heard, the public left the theater
pleased as Punch. One had never seen before so many happy…faces—satisfied
as if by a triumph in which they had all shared.” Ouch!
A few months later the first revised version (with the crucial addition of the tenor aria “Addio fiorito
asil” at the end of the opera) opened successfully in Brescia. Puccini and his librettists continued to
tinker over the next two years, recasting the opera into two acts and making the character of
Pinkerton less callous. The “definitive” version, as published by Ricordi, was produced in Paris in
1906. This is the version Pacific Opera Victoria presents.
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Pacific Opera Victoria Study Guide for Madama Butterfly 2008 13