As Act II opens, three years have passed. He intends to leave her as soon as he finds a suitable American wife. In Japanese, her name translates to “Butterfly.” Butterfly is so excited to marry an American that she has secretly converted to Christianity, against the wishes of her relatives. For Pinkerton, it’s purely a marriage of convenience.
He is wedding a 15-year-old Japanese girl, Ciocio-san. naval officer, has rented a house on a hill overlooking Nagasaki harbor in Japan. Puccini’s opera, written and set in 1904, offers a subtle indictment of the hubris of Western imperialism amid a clash of cultures. As the curtain rises, Pinkerton, a U.S. Of course, all of this leads to gripping drama (and dramatic music), which is the stuff of opera.īut let’s set aside all of these insane and villainous characters and focus on one of opera’s most tragic mothers- Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. But then there’s Luigi Cherubini’s Medea who does kill her two children. In the end, she can’t bring herself to do it.
Or consider Bellini’s Norma who contemplates murdering her two children in their sleep rather than allowing them to fall into the hands of an advancing Roman army.
The vengeful Queen of the Night gives Pamina a dagger and vows to disown her if she fails to assassinate Sarastro. Consider The Queen of the Night from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In this fiery aria (one of the most famous, and virtuosic in all of opera) she pays a terrifying visit to her daughter, Pamina.
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