Premiere: 24 April 2026
Csokonai Theatre
The performance is in Italian, with Hungarian and English subtitles provided for every performance.
The tragic love story of the young Japanese geisha, Cio-Cio-San—a tale that transcends national borders and even continents, defying traditions and customs—inspired one of the greatest figures of Italian opera, Giacomo Puccini, when he saw the play written by David Belasco, based on the short story by John Luther Long, in London.
In this poignant story, B.F. Pinkerton, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy stationed in Nagasaki, marries Cio-Cio-San, a young geisha, on a whim; she welcomes him with adoration and complete devotion, converts to his religion, and adopts American customs: in doing so, she not only casts aside her own traditions but also accepts the pain of being disowned by her own family.
Pinkerton soon returns to America, and for three years the girl waits with unwavering loyalty for him to come back to her. In the meantime, their child is born. When the man finally returns to Japan, his American wife is with him, and upon learning of the child, they decide to take him with them. Butterfly realizes that her love has been betrayed and that her life has fallen apart. Maintaining her dignity, she hands her child over to Pinkerton, then ends her life with her father’s dagger—in the name of family honor. Puccini’s opera is a painful tale of unconditional love, cultural misunderstandings, and tragic fidelity.
To achieve the most authentic soundscape possible, Puccini immersed himself in the various layers of Far Eastern music. The result is the third gem in Puccini’s oeuvre—after La Bohème and Tosca—which he orchestrated based on the libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. The story and arias of Madama Butterfly, which remains the most frequently performed opera in opera houses around the world to this day, can now be fully appreciated by the audience of the Csokonai National Theater in a production directed by Tamás Juronics.
Director: Tamás Juronics Kossuth and Harangozó Award winner
