Svetlana Loboff / OnP

Svetlana Loboff / OnP

Opera

Madama Butterfly

Giacomo Puccini

Opéra Bastille

from 14 September to 25 October 2024

from €37 to €175

2h55 with 1 interval

Madama Butterfly

Opéra Bastille - from 14 September to 25 October 2024

Synopsis

Listen to the synopsis

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Poor Madame Butterfly! The 15-year-old geisha, who has renounced her family and Japanese traditions for the love of an American naval officer, finds herself abandoned in favour of a Western wife. Giacomo Puccini used this classic theme of a woman seduced and abandoned to create an opera with lush orchestration and burning lyricism.

Premiered in 1904 at La Scala Milan, his score, full of oriental colours, vividly conveys the contrast between Lieutenant Pinkerton’s brutality and the vulnerability of Butterfly, who is as fragile as a butterfly’s wings.

For Robert Wilson, this Japanese tragedy proves the ideal environment in which to display his signature formalism. Far from the traditional fans and cherry branches, the director uses stylised acting and a stripped-down space to allow the melodic lines to blossom in all their purity.  

Duration : 2h55 with 1 interval

Language : Italian

Surtitle : French / English

Show acts and characters

CHARACTERS

Cio‑Cio‑San: Known as “Madama Butterfly”, a fifteen-year-old Japanese girl
Suzuki: Her servant
F. B. Pinkerton: A lieutenant in the U.S. Navy
Sharpless: American Consul in Nagasaki
Lo Zio Bonzo: Cio‑Cio‑San’s uncle
Il Principe Yamadori: A rich Japanese prince
Kate Pinkerton: Pinkerton’s legal American wife
Goro: The marriage broker

First part

First part
The American, Pinkerton, is on temporary assignment in Japan. To enjoy his time there until his departure, he plans to marry Cio-Cio-San, a young geisha with whom he is infatuated. Goro, the marriage broker, has arranged everything. While the latter is introducing Pinkerton to his future servants, the first wedding guest to arrive is the American Consul.

Assuring Pinkerton that Cio-Cio-San takes their relationship very seriously, the Consul cautions him not to destroy the young girl’s life for the sake of a passing fancy. The bride arrives, accompanied by five companions. Soon there-after the relatives and friends arrive. Two public officials declare Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton married. The celebrations are interrupted by Cio-Cio-San’s uncle, a Bonze.

Having learned that his niece has converted to Christianity, he bans her from her family and society. The other guests follow his example. Left alone, Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San avow their love for each other and retire to the wedding chamber.  

Second part

Second part
A few years have passed. Pinkerton has long returned to the United States. Cio-Cio-San has given birth to a son. Alone with him and her faithful servant Suzuki, she awaits the return of her husband. The Consul comes to pay her a visit. Pinkerton has written to him: he will be returning to Japan soon, accompanied by his American wife, and he has asked him to prepare Cio-Cio-San for his return. However, the latter’s endless interruptions prevent him from giving her the news. Yamadori, a rich prince, has asked for her hand in marriage.

She refuses, considering herself legally married to Pinkerton. The Consul tries once more to read her the letter. Cio-Cio‑San grasps just one thing: her husband is returning to Japan. The Consul finally loses patience: what if Pinkerton were never to return? The words pierce Cio-Cio-San like a mortal blade. At nightfall, the sound of a cannon announces the arrival of Pinkerton’s ship. Wild with joy, Cio-Cio-San decorates the house with flowers and waits for him to come all night. The next morning,

Pinkerton arrives at the home of Cio-Cio-San, accompanied by his American wife. He asks for his son, but avoids any encounter with Cio-Cio-San. Left alone, the two wives find themselves face to face. Finally understanding the reality of the situation, Cio-Cio-San commits suicide.  

Artists

Japanese tragedy in three acts (1904)

After David Belasco, based on a short novel by John Luther Long

Creative team

Cast

The Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus

Media

[TRAILER] MADAMA BUTTERFLY by Giacomo Puccini
[TRAILER] MADAMA BUTTERFLY by Giacomo Puccini
  • À L'AFFICHE - Madame Butterfly, SUSHI sauce BOLOGNAISE ?

    À L'AFFICHE - Madame Butterfly, SUSHI sauce BOLOGNAISE ?

    Watch the video

  • The lighting for Madama Butterfly

    The lighting for Madama Butterfly

    Read the article

  • Draw-me Madama Butterfly

    Draw-me Madama Butterfly

    Watch the video

  • Letter to Madam Butterfly

    Letter to Madam Butterfly

    Read the article

À L'AFFICHE - Madame Butterfly, SUSHI sauce BOLOGNAISE ?

Watch the video

1:30 min

À L'AFFICHE - Madame Butterfly, SUSHI sauce BOLOGNAISE ?

By Octave

© Elena Bauer / OnP

The lighting for Madama Butterfly

Read the article

A production, a memory

02 min

The lighting for Madama Butterfly

By Rui De Matos Machado

Deputy head of the lighting department

“I know few other directors who place as much importance on lighting as Robert Wilson. He is present at every revival, requesting a significant number of lighting sessions to refine his lighting and enrich it with the experience gathered from other productions that have marked his personal development. I have worked with him on the lighting for Die Zauberflöte, Pelléas et Mélisande, and Madama ButterflyMadama Butterfly was our first collaboration.

When you think about the lighting for Bob’s productions, the first thing that comes to mind is the cyclorama—that stretched canvas upstage which helps to create huge and highly homogenous luminous surfaces… It’s a key feature of his aesthetic which works to define the atmosphere on stage. He doesn’t use it in a descriptive or realistic way to depict the sky for example, as so many other directors do. It’s a dynamic form of lighting which evolves and adapt to the ebbs and flows of the drama: it turns red when the bonze storms furiously on stage to reproach Cio-Cio-San for having repudiated her family; it takes on a truly poetic shade of deep blue when the child, in all its fragility, walks on stage… This interaction between the lighting and the characters is one of the characteristics of Wilson’s aesthetic: there is a continuity between the different components of the production, namely, the libretto, the music, the direction of the actors, the lighting…

A furious Bonze (Scott Wilde) enters to confront Cio-Cio-San (Svetla Vassileva) - 2014
A furious Bonze (Scott Wilde) enters to confront Cio-Cio-San (Svetla Vassileva) - 2014 © Elena Bauer/OnP

The lighting for “Butterfly” has evolved with the succession of revivals. The most remarkable aspect in that development is the trend toward cooler hues: He has less and less time for those warmer slightly amber-toned lights. He leans more towards blues. It’s a development which I can see in all his other productions. Does that mean that the atmosphere is more serious, more tragic? No. Not really. The crisp light blue of winter can be perfectly cheerful. If I had to describe that development, I would say that he is moving towards daylight…”

Draw-me Madama Butterfly

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

1:07 min

Draw-me Madama Butterfly

By Octave

For his Madame Chrysanthème, Pierre Loti drew on memories of his own visit to Japan in 1885. When composing Madama Butterfly, Giacomo Puccini was inspired by the popular melodies and sonorities of Japanese voices. However, in the literary work, as in the opera, the heroine remains the same: Kiku-san or Cio‑Cio‑san, a young geisha betrayed by her western husband, the symbol of the meeting of two different worlds. Robert Wilson’s ethereal production espouses to perfection the dramatic intensity and underlying violence of this thoroughly Japanese tragedy.  

© Felipe Ribon

Letter to Madam Butterfly

Read the article

Original text by Ryoko Sekiguchi

11 min

Letter to Madam Butterfly

By Ryoko Sekiguchi

«  Dear Madam Butterfly,

I have taken the liberty of writing to you even though we do not know each other – or rather, even though you do not know me, for who in the wide world has not at least heard your name? Having seen you reappear very recently, I wished to express in a letter – that most intimate form of communication- my sentiments concerning what you have experienced.

Yours is a story, above all, not so much about conversion as about belief. You have embodied the entire range of meanings of the verb “believe”, with all its densest and richest subtleties. This verb accompanies you everywhere – it even precedes you. Before you first appear on stage, the Consul, Sharpless, warns Pinkerton: “Beware, she believes in it.” From the outset you are enshrouded in this attribute.

Why did you convert to Christianity? I think I can understand it. You were born in Nagasaki, where, in the 16th Century, Christianity first entered Japan. This faith was more familiar to you than to the rest of the country. When it was forbidden in the 17th Century, Christians were forced into hiding. Conflicts with traditional religious confessions became increasingly acrimonious, as your uncle Bonze’s anger shows.

You must have known that Christianity is the religion of love. Strange as it may seem to foreigners, there is no word for “love” in Japanese. In those days, there were only the words iro: “sensuality” or “carnal desire”; : “attachment” or “affection”; and finally ai which now extends to the western conception of love but which once expressed only the nuance “cherish”. One could not fall in love in Japanese. Indeed, you are not the only one to have noticed. It was at this period that, with the translation of the word “love”, the Japanese discovered the sentiment that it denoted.

Through this religion you hoped to gain strength and independence. Thanks to your faith, everything would become possible. In fact, many doors remained closed to you, but it seemed to you that you had at last gained access to another world, to the modern age; to the West and the promise of a better life.

You said: “With my new life, I adopt a new religion”. You did not say which one. Perhaps for you it was not so much a belief in Christ the Redeemer as in simply a “new religion”.

Your life is not the banal story of submission and fidelity that one so often associates with Japanese women. As a Geisha, you must have known other men, even if your youth and respectable background preserved you from the cruel destiny that the world usually reserved for women. It may even be that your fidelity to Pinkerton was less a reflection of the qualities you appreciated in him than in the immense faith you placed in your new life. He appeared to you as representing the complete opposite of your straitjacketed existence and the pettiness of provincial morality. In a relationship where words seem to have little weight, it was with your body that you perceived all those tiny delicate subtleties. You soaked up every nuance of the word “love” and you believed in it, heart and soul.

In short, however cruel he was towards you, it is not Pinkerton’s betrayal that is the real cause of the tragedy. The true catastrophe, like an inescapable abyss, is that he was incapable of believing that anyone could die for love. On your wedding night, he said to you: “Love does not kill, it gives life” What went through your mind at that moment? That your love did not exclude death? There is nothing sad about this. With a Romeo at your side, you could have been a Juliet; that would have been a consummate love.

For the Japanese of the Edo period, death was the consummation of extreme passion. Young lovers whose union was forbidden or whose parents refused their marriage, often chose to die together.

Unlike those young couples, who plunged together into the abyss, you died alone. You chose an “honourable death” and to silence your other desires. You never intimated your intentions to him. But you knew that it is only after death that a being becomes unforgettable for those that knew him. You ended your days in such a way that Pinkerton could never have done with you. Perhaps you did not hear his remorse when he declares, “This torment will never end”.

My dear Butterfly, the reality staged by Robert Wilson is not other people’s reality: it is your reality, that of the world you built for yourself. I know some people persist in reading your story “in context”, as if you had no choice but to remain faithful to Pinkerton because your material survival depended on it; as if he treated your relationship lightly because you were only a Geisha, at a period when Japanese courtesans specialised in Western lovers.

Your past is not important. What counts is that you tried to make your love the centre of the universe – your universe. What others might well call the illusion of love was not an illusion for you.

In the setting Robert Wilson created for you, no noise from outside, no rumour of spiteful tongues comes to disturb you. Your every gesture bathed in light, your solitude simply renders you more sublime.

Indeed, I wonder if the visions embodied on the stage are not those which will pursue Pinkerton, haunted by you and by your story, for the rest of his life. The stylised gestures, which emerge in a purity that owes nothing to realism, might well represent the images struggling within his mind. And there you are, transformed in his eyes into a heroine of Greek tragedy.

Dear friend, I will not remind you of Cio-Cio-San, unlike those of the Japanese entourage that you wished to detach yourself from. Neither will I call you Mrs Pinkerton as you wished to be known because you are something other than the wife of that man. I shall call you Madam Butterfly, as people do throughout the world, out of deference and admiration.

In any case, who knows? Perhaps it was less love than wonder that so marked you, wonder at a new world you didn’t know existed. The great men of your time, Sôseki Natsume and Ôgai Mori for example, were also shocked by the confrontation between east and west: a vertiginous experience, demanding profound self-transformation and which continued to provoke considerable debate amongst writers of the next generation, men and women alike.

It is also for that reason that, for the Japanese, your story is so exceptional. By revealing the cruelty of the meeting of east and west, you are the only Japanese woman to have earned the status of heroine in that most European of art forms, opera. One must add that, for a long time, Butterfly was the only role allowed to Japanese singers on European stages. Several figures owe their celebrity to their performance of your role: Tamaki Muira, the first Japanese singer ever to be engaged by the Metropolitan Opera and who performed more than 2000 times during her twenty year stay in Europe in the twenties and thirties. Other Japanese singers even continued to honour your role on the great international stages during the two world wars. Thanks to you, those Japanese women were able to live the life that you had dreamed of and fulfilled themselves in the West as independent women.

However, your story always provokes ambivalent feelings for us. It touches us because it is also to some extent “our” story. There persists amongst the Japanese a certain bitterness that we were only admitted to the operatic repertoire in the guise of a “submissive” woman. In Europe, too many productions perpetuate the old Orientalist clichés and represent you as a poor, naïve geisha, which tends to irritate Japanese audiences. As well as passion in its purest form, your story embodies the incomprehension of the West and, alas, still resonates with us today.

The Japanese, for their part, have re-appropriated your story. In 1954, a Japanese-Italian production was filmed at the Cinecittà studios with the actresses of the Takarazuka theatre company, of whom Kaoru Yachigusa was the most gracious butterfly I have ever seen. The Japanese novelist, Masahiko Shimada, turned his attention to what happened to your son. He wrote the libretto for an opera in which your son, adopted by Pinkerton and his American wife, returns at last to his native land only to become a victim, in a terrible stroke of irony, of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, your home town, at the hands of the Americans.

When we contemplate your story, we oscillate between passion and incomprehension. Like you, I am Japanese, I was born in Japan and I remember my first experience of the west – my arrival in France in the eighties. The west that I discovered seemed to open up a kaleidoscopic range of possibilities. After a good ten years or so in France, I lived in Rome where I discovered yet another Europe, as if I had only just arrived on the continent. Our encounters with the West shock and mark us forever. We try to get closer. For my part, I make myself write in both languages, Japanese and French, not so much to promote understanding, but to get the clearest possible sense of our differences and affinities. We Japanese are all a bit like Madam Butterfly, or we have been. We have all experienced the turmoil of emotions that the first encounter with the West always provokes. Except those, perhaps, who retreat into a narrow-minded nationalism in order to protect themselves from who knows what – perhaps from their own fear. The fear of being shaken up, changed by that otherness. But if that contact with others is not what we call life, or love, what is the point of living? »

Ryoko Sekiguchi
Paris, 14th June 2015


Writer and translator Ryoko Sekiguchi was born in Tokyo. She has lived and worked in Paris since 1997, writing in both French and Japanese.She is the author of Ce n’est pas un hasard (P.O.L.), Le Club des gourmets et autres cuisines japonaises (P.O.L), L’Astringent (Argol), Manger fantôme (Argol). She has translated authors into Japanese: Atiq Rahimi, Jean Echenoz, Mathias Enard, Pierre Alferi; and into French: Yôko Tawada, Gôzô Yoshimasu. Winner of the Prix de Rome in 2013, she is at present a "pensionnaire" of the Académie de France in Rome.

  • [EXTRAIT] MADAME BUTTERFLY de Puccini - "Un bel dì, vedremo" (Eleonora Buratto)
  • [EXTRAIT] MADAME BUTTERFLY de Puccini - "Addio, fiorito asil" (Stefan Pop)
  • [EXTRAIT] MADAME BUTTERFLY de Puccini - "Vieni, amor mio!" (Eleonora Buratto, Stefan Pop)
  • [EXTRAIT] MADAME BUTTERFLY de Giacomo - "Quest'obi pomposa" (Eleonora Buratto, Stefan Pop)
  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 3

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 3

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 2

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 2

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 1

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 1

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte3

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte3

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 1

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 1

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 1

  • Madame Butterfly (saison 24/25) - Acte 1

Press

  • A conducting style both precise and vibrant, deeply respectful of Puccini’s score, which the composer would have undoubtedly appreciated.

    MusiCultura online
  • A huge ovation from the audience during the curtain call.

    Le Bruitduoff Tribune, 2024
  • Eleonora Buratto's timbre, capable of infusing every note with power and emotional intensity, is a marvel of balance and sensuality

    Bachtrack, 2024
  • Everything is suggested and the mind travels to Japanese landscapes.

    Le Bruitduoff Tribune, 2024
  • Musically, this performance of Madama Butterfly is remarkable for Speranza Scappucci's smooth and consistently steady conducting.

    Webthéâtre, 2024

Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

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Stage director, scenographer and visual artist, Robert Wilson is without a doubt one of the major figures of Western theatre. Since the 1970s, he has often drawn inspiration from the Japanese dramatic tradition to create works that offer an entirely new relationship between time and space.

BUY THE PROGRAM
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text

Stage director, scenographer and visual artist, Robert Wilson is without a doubt one of the major figures of Western theatre. Since the 1970s, he has often drawn inspiration from the Japanese dramatic tradition to create works that offer an entirely new relationship between time and space.

BUY THE PROGRAM
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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5 min

Madama Butterfly

Madama Butterfly: the true/false story

An exotic Far East, a story of love and betrayal… Can you untangle this true/false synopsis of Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly? You’re up!

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