Cast

Creative Team

The opera begins not in Nagasaki, but at the funeral of B.F. Pinkerton, an old man. His widow, Kate, appears aged and solemn, accompanied by her grown son. At the graveside, she hands him a dusty, aged kimono box filled with Japanese objects — relics of a past he has never known. As he opens it, the story of his true mother, Cio-Cio-San, begins to unfold. 

Act I 

In Nagasaki, many years earlier, a young U.S. naval officer, Pinkerton, leases a house and takes a Japanese bride: Cio-Cio-San, a delicate girl who has abandoned her family’s traditions for the promise of marriage. At the wedding, relatives disown her, while Pinkerton raises a toast to a carefree life, oblivious to the depth of her devotion. The scene, both radiant and uneasy, plays out like a memory on stage — one that the son sees with both wonder and unease. The union is celebrated, but shadows already hang over it, as Butterfly’s relatives curse her and Pinkerton dismisses his “marriage” as temporary. The son, watching, realises he is seeing the moment where everything began. 

Act II 

The world of memory grows denser. Years have passed; Pinkerton has left. Butterfly, with her loyal servant Suzuki, waits faithfully, raising her child — the boy who will grow into the man now watching. She refuses the advances of Prince Yamadori, insisting Pinkerton will keep his promise. The American consul, Sharpless, tries to warn her that Pinkerton has married another woman in America, but Butterfly clings to hope. The son, confronted with his own childhood self, becomes both witness and participant, as if standing inside his own lost history. Butterfly sings of her unwavering devotion, clutching the tokens Pinkerton left behind. When a cannon announces a ship’s arrival, she is sure her husband has come back to her. She scatters flowers, dresses in her beloved wedding kimono, and keeps vigil through the night with her son. 

Act III 

The memory darkens into inevitability. At dawn, the truth unfolds. Pinkerton has indeed returned — but with his American wife, Kate, who cannot bear to look at the young Japanese woman her husband once abandoned. Butterfly greets her with dignity and learns that they have come to take her child. Shattered, she agrees to give up her son if Pinkerton himself will fetch him. Left alone, Butterfly prepares for death. She takes out her father’s dagger — the final object from the box — and bids her child farewell. With honour and heartbreak, she ends her life. 

The memory fades. The son now holds the empty box, its contents spent, its secrets revealed. He looks into the future, carrying both the wound of his mother’s loss and the weight of her story — a history once buried, now brought back into the light.