Madame Butterfly by Puccini, Från (2023/2023), Regisserad av Pier Francesco Maestrini,, Dirigent Stefano Romani, Slovene National Theatre, Maribor, Slovenien

Even before Tosca had its premiere at the Roman Opera in January 1900, Puccini was already intensively searching for a new theme or template for his next opera. Maeterlinck's drama Pelléas et Mélisande, Hugo's epochal novel Les Misérables and Daudet's novel Tartarin de Tarascon were among the shortlist of suitable works. But it was only after a summer visit to the London production of Tosca that he found his true inspiration in the tragic one-act play Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan by David Belasco, which was created as a dramatization of the short story Madame Butterfly by John Luther Long and was currently being performed at London's Duke of York's Theatre. Puccini was enthusiastic about the performance, so he immediately engaged his librettists, Illico and Giacosa, to begin preparing the text. As usual, Illica's task was to The first version of the opera Madama Butterfly, conceived in only two acts, was performed for the first time in Milan's Scala on February 17, 1904, and was poorly received by the audience, despite the fact that they were in the roles of two main protagonists - a couple in love – Choča san and Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton engaged renowned soprano Rosina Storchio and tenor Giovanni Zenatello. The main reason for the fiasco of the opera premiere was not some compositional deficiency, but above all the lack of time to properly prepare the demanding musical score, which Puccini submitted after the scheduled deadline, because of his thorough acquaintance with Japanese culture - it is known that when composing often consulted with a Japanese actress who was staying in Milan at the time - took too much time. Puccini, however, did not give up on the opera after the failed first performance and merely broke it down somewhat dramaturgically - in fact, he "broke" the original second act into two parts - and also made some minor harmonic and melodic corrections in individual arias and instrumental transitions. This was followed by the great success of the first performance of the new version of the opera on May 28 of the same year (1904) in Brescia. Madama Butterfly, which after a hiatus of more than ten years (it was last staged in the 2008/2009 season) will come to life again on the big Maribor stage, is one of those rare examples