The original John Luther Long story “Madame Butterfly” is available online, courtesy of the American Hypertext Project: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/LONG/abstract.html

Belasco’s play is available to download on New York City Opera’s website: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/butterfly/belasco.html

The 1988 play M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang is widely available in bookstores and libraries. Inspired by the opera, it takes as its starting point the complaint of some critics that the opera Madama Butterfly plays into negative cultural stereotypes of Asian women as the “ideal woman” because of their alleged passivity and meekness. The twists and turns of Hwang’s tale are surprising and extremely provocative. It was turned into a film in 1993 starring Jeremy Irons.

The rock band Weezer put out an album in 1996 called “Pinkerton.” In it singer Rivers Cuomo describes his modern-day Asian fetish. He takes the early twentieth-century Cio-Cio-San as the model of his “immortal-beloved, admired-from-afar,” however. From the songs “Across the Sea” about a fan letter from an 18 year-old Japanese girl to “El Scorcho,” in which he complains “Goddamn you half-Japanese girls, you do it to me every time,” to the final track “Butterfly” which is essentially a reworking of Pinkerton’s remorse aria, in which the narrator trapped a butterfly in a Mason jar only to find it withered away the next morning, this album provides shocking contemporary corollaries to what is not such an outdated story after all, couched here in contemporary indie-rock packaging. Just as in the opera, you get to decide if “Pinkerton” is really changed and/or remorseful by the time he sings, in the final track: “Every time I pin down what I think I want it slips away | The ghost slips away | I told you I would return | When the robin makes his nest | But I ain't never coming back”

Puccini: His Life and Works by Julian Budden (Oxford University Press) is excellent, a complete resource for all things Puccini that is written in clear, readable prose. There is a fair amount of musical analysis, so depending on your comfort level with discussions of harmony and orchestration you may want to read, instead, Puccini: A Biography by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz.

Puccini - Madama Butterfly / Scotto, Bergonzi, Panerai, Di Stasio, Opera di Roma, Barbirolli

Mirella Freni as Butterfly, with Luciano Pavarotti as Pinkerton, conducted by von Karajan. Decca.