Puccini came to the premiere of Madama Butterfly expecting a triumph. The opera, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, tells the story of Cio-Cio-San, a young Japanese woman abandoned by an American naval officer in Nagasaki. On February 17, 1904, the La Scala audience heckled and hissed it. Puccini withdrew the work, cut and reshaped it, and split the long second act in two. The revised version succeeded in Brescia that May and has held the stage ever since.
Puccini was sure of this one. He gave his sisters a box for the premiere and kept his teenage son backstage beside him. Rosina Storchio sang Cio-Cio-San under the baton of Cleofonte Campanini. By the end of the night, La Scala had given the opera one of the most famous flops in its history. Parts of the audience whistled, shouted and mocked the score, and some historians suspect rivals of the composer had organized the heckling.
Puccini did not argue with the audience. He took the opera back, refunded the management and started revising. He trimmed the first act, divided a marathon second act into two, and sharpened the drama around the heroine's long wait for Pinkerton's return.
The new Butterfly opened in Brescia just three months later, on May 28, 1904, and the audience demanded encore after encore. The opera that failed at La Scala became one of the most performed in the world, and the ruined first night became a favourite piece of opera folklore.
Key people: Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica, Giuseppe Giacosa, Rosina Storchio