The body and wings of a butterfly are covered with dust-like scales that it loses, even when handled delicately. It is left vulnerable and weakened.
Perhaps someone should have told Pinkerton, the debonair American who charms and seduces Cio-Cio San, the butterfly of Puccini's opera.
Pinkerton meets Butterfly whilst stationed in the Orient and leaves her on his return to America, although promising to return. She brings up their child and dreams of their reunion, yet when he does come back it is with his American wife. Cio-Cio San is heartbroken and she kills herself.
Madame Butterfly is one of Puccini's finest works and it continues to fascinate audiences. It is one of the opening performances for the Marinsky Theater's new season.
The story plays out a theme that Puccini used in many of his operas -- those who have lived for love, have died for love. His heroines are women devoted completely to their lovers. Tormented by feelings of guilt, they are destroyed by their passion.
Puccini was an unrivalled master in his ability to fuse erotic passion, tenderness, pathos and despair. It is no surprise that Puccini's life (1858-1924) was not without its fair share of passion, scandal and torment.
His illegal union with a married woman, Elvira Germignani, scandalized contemporary society. They eventually married in 1904, but Elvira proved a tempestuous wife. Her jealous threats drove an innocent servant girl to poison herself. The scandal, and the charges brought against Elvira were the talk of the newspapers and salons of the day.
Puccini's Butterfly has attracted some of the greatest sopranos of this century, drawn by the complex weave of emotions that the character requires.
The idea of fragility tested to the utmost is central to the role, just like the delicate creature she represents. But while Pinkerton may have been drawn to her child-like innocence, Butterfly is a far more complicated picture -- at once proud, ashamed, unbendable, self-sustaining.
It is the manifestation of her pride, bravery, fear and rejection which make Cio-Cio San both interesting and compelling for the audience, and the work one of the worlds most loved and performed operas.