Which play inspired Giacomo Puccini to create Madama Butterfly?

Giacomo Puccini was inspired to create Madama Butterfly after attending a performance of the one-act play Madame Butterfly by the American playwright David Belasco in London in 1900.1

Belasco’s play was itself derived from a short story of the same name written by the American author John Luther Long. Puccini was deeply moved by the poignancy of the story, which depicts the tragic love of a Japanese woman for an American sailor, and he subsequently commissioned his librettists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, to adapt the work into an opera.12