Madama Butterfly - Giacomo Puccini

The opera Madame Butterfly premiered at La Scala in Milan on 17 February 1904 and was essentially a failure. The reasons for 'the greatest fiasco of Puccini's career' (Piotr Kamiński, A Thousand and One Operas) were linked to the rather unfortunate original concept of the work, which called for a two-act structure.