Hutton Honors College

Night at the Opera: Madama Butterfly
With a Pre-performance Talk by Music Critic Peter Jacobi

• Friday, April 6, 2007
• Pre-performance Talk 6:30 p.m.
• Performance 8 p.m.
• Musical Arts Center
• Tickets: $12
• Refreshments Included
• SIGN-UP REQUIRED

Reported to be the most frequently performed opera in the United States, Madama Butterfly includes Giacomo Puccini’s extraordinarily beautiful, haunting music and controversial accounts of Japanese culture and the role of the United States in the world at the end of the nineteenth century. Based in part on a short story by American writer John Luther Long, which itself is believed to be based on events that occurred in Nagasaki in the early 1890s, the opera presents the story of a young Japanese geisha, Cio-Cio-San, who rejects her religion and customs to marry an American Naval lieutenant but is abandoned by him when his tour of duty in Japan is over. Upon his return to the United States, the lieutenant marries an American wife while Cio-Cio-San optimistically awaits his return to Japan for her and their child. Various adaptations have been made of Madama Butterfly, including the Broadway musical Miss Saigon.

Join us for a pre-performance talk by Peter Jacobi, music critic and columnist for The (Bloomington) Herald-Times, as well as an opening night performance at the IU Opera Theater. Jacobi, who has written for The New York Times, the Chicago Daily News, Opera, Symphony, and a wide range of other publications, is a professor emeritus in the IU School of Journalism and a former chair of the Indiana Arts Commission.

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