Madama Butterfly
Synopsis & Musical Selections
Madama Butterfly is an opera sung in Italian by Giacomo Puccini
ACT I - a Japanese house and garden overlooking Nagasaki Bay.
Goro, a marriage broker, explains the features of a local home to the U.S. Navy Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton, who recently leased the place for 999 years, with the option to cancel the contract with a month’s notice. As part of the deal, Pinkerton receives three servants and takes a geisha wife known as Madama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San). The American Consul, Sharpless, arrives and Pinkerton explains his philosophy of life—a navy man’s life of pleasure, roaming the seas in search of adventure with a girl in every port. Sharpless cautions the officer that Cio-Cio-San may not take their wedding vows as lightly as he.
Click here to listen to “Amore o grillo...”
Pinkerton dismisses the Consul’s warnings and toasts the day he takes a “real” American wife. Cio-Cio-San and her friends are heard from offstage. When she arrives, Sharpless plays a game to guess her age and learns that she is 15 years old. She explains to Sharpless and Pinkerton that her family was once wealthy, but lost their status. Goro tells them that her father committed suicide on the instructions of the Mikado. Naively but with no shame, she informs the men she became a geisha to stay alive. Cio-Cio-San shows her future husband her meager belongings and humbly declares that, as the ultimate sign of her love, she has converted to the Christian faith.
Click here to listen “Ieri son salita”.
The wedding is brief, more like a business deal. The post-wedding celebration is interrupted by the arrival of the Bonze, Cio-Cio-San’s uncle, a Buddhist priest who berates the young girl for betraying her people and her religion. Pinkerton angrily orders the Bonze and the other guests away and turns to his new wife to console her, drying her tears as night falls.
Click here to listen to “Bimba, Bimba, non piangere” and “Come ora fa…Vogliatemi bene”.
Student Night at the Opera concludes after Act I of
Madama Butterfly.