Puccini believed he had spotted in Belasco’s play all the ingredients for a guaranteed hit. The play’s setting, too, was appealing: a vogue for Japanese art, ceramics and textiles was sweeping Europe and Puccini’s rival Mascagni had recently turned to an Eastern subject for his opera Iris. Puccini found Belasco’s play deeply moving and was particularly attracted to its vigil scene: a prolonged wordless passage during which Cio-Cio-San awaited the return of her lover, the transition from dusk to dawn depicted by elaborate coloured lights. ![]() The only honourable course of action the distraught Cio-Cio-San can see is to end her life. ![]() For Pinkerton, however, the marriage is nothing but a game, and he casually abandons Cio-Cio-San, only to return later, ‘proper’ Western wife in tow, to retrieve his infant son. She believes their union to be legally binding, adopts American customs and gradually becomes isolated from her friends and relatives. Pinkerton, an American naval officer stationed in Nagasaki, ‘marries’ a 15-year-old Japanese girl, Cio-Cio-San (Madam Butterfly). ![]() Though Puccini understood almost no English, the essence of the plot was simple enough to grasp. Advertisement What is the storyline of Madame Butterfly?
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