Madam Butterfly was originally a
play before it was ever an opera, when Puccini first show the play there where
so many alterations to the play that he was unable to understand the words text
but the overall story and the theatrical handling inspired him to compose the opera
we all know today. Puccini must have felt an instinct to add music in
the play, such as part when the moving episode of the Butterfly’ lonely vigil
for the first few seconds of the play.
The main plot of the story is about
an American naval officer named Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, who arrives
in Japan to take up his duties. Who was suggested by one of his friends to take
a Japanese wife and house. The young bride, Cho-Cho-San, is a geisha whose
family agreed strongly for the marriage until Pinkerton forbade the family from
visiting. He leaves to the sea, unknowing back at home Cho-Cho has given birth
to a son that she named trouble. She hopes that her husband would return one
day but her maid, Suzuki, is skeptical. Cho-Cho
writes a letter to him saying that she was getting married and if he didn't come she was going to take the baby. Later on his ship arrives in Japan,
Cho-Cho learns that he has brought his other wife who did not know that Cho-Cho
was also Pinkerton’s wife and was planning on taking the baby. In grief Cho-Cho
goes home trying to committee suicide with the family sword.
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