Introduction | Synopsis | Madam Butterfly | Inspirations

From Madame Chrysantheme

In 1897 a story was published in Century Magazine called Madame Butterfly. It was written by John Luther Long. It is probable that Long had read a popular novel of the time called Madame Chrysantheme by a French Navel officer, Piere Loti. The novel was based on Loti's stay in Japan and told of his short lived contract marriage to a Geisha girl in Nagasaki. The magazine story was a great success and it was from this that the American playwright and producer David Belasco created a one act play also called Madam Butterfly. The play premiered in New York in 1900, it took the public storm and a month later it was taken to London where it opened at the Duke of York's Theatre.

Puccini was in London for the premier of TOSCA and went to see the play. He immediately realised its potential as an opera. On 17 February 1904 Puccini's Madame Butterfly premiered at La Scala, Milan.

Alain Boublil and Claude Michel Schönberg were first inspired by a photo, taken a few weeks before the fall of Saigon, of a women giving up her child at Saigon airport in the hope of a new life in America. This photo led them back to the story of Madame Butterfly and then to its source, Madame Chrysantheme. This in turn inspired them to write their own version of the story, Miss Saigon.