Madama Butterfly

Love, betrayal, and a clash of cultures: with MadamaButterfly , Giacomo Puccinicreated one of the most intense operas in the repertoire. It tells the story of the geisha Cio-Cio-San, known as Butterfly, who, against all reason, clings to the unconditional hope that her American husband Pinkerton will return. The setting is the picturesque Japanese city of Nagasaki, located on hills, at the time the work was written around 1900. Puccini masterfully combines a Far Eastern sound world—striving for authenticity through quotations from Japanese music—with universally moving conflicts.

However, the work not only explores the emotional dimension of the events surrounding a woman's enduring love for an unfaithful husband, but also critically examines the main characters' inability to reconcile the two cultural realities.Madama Butterfly thus becomesa social drama that reveals how Western capitalist and social principles spread to Japan, which had been isolated by the shoguns until the mid-19th century.

The Italian composer's music imbues the plot with delicate lyricism, intimate dialogue, and great expressiveness. Cio-Cio-San's famous aria Un bel dì vedremo thus became the essence of the heroine's impossible hope that her dream of a happy future would not lead to personal disaster. The staging of this painfully beautiful material is in the hands of co-music theater director Jasmina Hadžiahmetović.