Madama Butterfly originated in a story by John Luther Long and was adapted for the stage by David Belasco. The play premiered with great success in New York in 1900, then quickly crossed the Atlantic for a London production where it was seen by Giacomo Puccini. Puccini's first version of the opera failed at La Scala in 1904, but a revised version was successful the same year, the version that we hear today, one of the most frequently produced operas in the entire repertory.

Puccini’s quintessential work features all of the triumph and turmoil that opera fans have come to desire and expect in one glorious musical score. Set in early 20th century Japan, the opera follows the rise and fall of the marriage between a vulnerable Japanese geisha, Cio Cio San, and her disengaged American husband, Naval officer Lt. Pinkerton. The stage for the tragedy is set. We meet the beauteous Cio-Cio San, not a complete innocent – she has been a geisha, after all – but nonetheless fragile, unworldly, and in love with the handsome sailor. She deceives herself, despite abundant warnings, as to Pinkerton's motives. The tale unfolds with well written dialogue, sung to music which captures the feelings of love and yearning and pain, raising the entire experience into the realm of great art, transcendently moving. 

This simple plot provides the vehicle for the arias of love and loss, hope and despair, the stuff of which the very best operatic music is made.