Music by: Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924)

Rendered into Arabic by: Samir Shikhani

An opera in three acts, adapted from the story by John Luther Long

First produced in Milan in 1904

The Characters:

• Cio-Cio-San (Madame Butterfly) • Lieutenant Pinkerton, of the American Navy • Sharpless, the American consul • Suzuki, Cio-Cio-San's handmaid • Goro, a marriage broker • The Bonze, Cio-Cio-San's uncle • Prince Yamadori • Kate Pinkerton • Trouble, Cio-Cio-San's son

Time: about the year 1900 Place: the city of Nagasaki, in Japan.

Act One

Scene One: The garden of a Japanese house overlooking the harbor of Nagasaki. The first strange strains of this opera carry us away to the Far East. When the curtain rises we behold the garden surrounding the house that the American officer Pinkerton has rented, standing on the slope of a hill that overlooks the harbor of Nagasaki. We see the scrawny Japanese marriage broker, Goro, showing Pinkerton over this house, which he has leased for him to live in with the bride he is offering him — a beautiful geisha girl, twenty-four years of age, named Cio-Cio-San and known in English as Madame Butterfly. After Goro presents to him the three comely maidservants he has brought — among them Suzuki, the personal handmaid of the bride-to-be — he informs him that Madame Butterfly has twenty-four kinsmen and kinswomen, all of whom will attend the wedding celebration.

At that moment there enters the American consul Sharpless, Pinkerton's friend, panting with fatigue after climbing the hill to reach this house. He has come to talk over with Pinkerton the matter of his expected marriage. From the course of the conversation it becomes plain to the consul that the young lieutenant regards the Japanese marriage

contract as nothing but pleasure and jest. In vain does the consul try to persuade this frivolous, selfish officer that he must look upon the world with seriousness and sobriety. He tells him frankly at the last that this principle of his in life may be easy, and conducive to cheerfulness and comfort, but that it most often leads to sorrow and pain.

But Pinkerton pays no heed to the consul's words; he raises his glass to drink the toast of the United States, singing that the sailor goes where he pleases and does what he pleases, and repeating that the term of the house lease, like that of the marriage, is ninety-nine years — but either contract can be dissolved the moment it suits him...

Goro returns to announce the coming of the bride, Madame Butterfly, in the company of her kinsfolk and friends. While the procession slowly climbs the hill, the girls sing the joyous wedding melody, and the bride appears at the little garden gate, roses and sweet herbs in her hands, radiant with beauty, youth, and happiness.

The marriage contract is