When the young Cio-Cio-San marries the handsome US Navy Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, she gives up everything – after all, he has promised her a new life, and the warnings of her nearest and dearest seem trivial in the face of true love. Years later, she waits eagerly for his return and to introduce him to his son, but his arrival leads only to tragedy.

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly has moved audiences to tears for over a century, asking them to accept that Cio-Cio-San’s suffering is beautiful; that Pinkerton’s betrayal is inevitable; that a woman’s destruction is the price of a meaningful story. But this ‘Butterfly for the ages’ (The Arts Desk) refuses this bargain. The opera is reimagined as a journey through memory and identity by director Daisy Evans and designer Kat Heath (both Albert Herring 2024), with ‘stunning’ lighting by Jake Wiltshire and costumes by Catherine Fay. In their hands, Madama Butterfly becomes urgent and human – a meditation on what we inherit, what we conceal, and what it costs when the truth is finally brought to light.

Coming to Scotland after a triumphant run in Dublin, this production’s first-rate cast includes Sunyoung Seo (Il trittico 2023) as Cio-Cio-San, Andrés Presno as Pinkerton, Lea Shaw (L’heure espagnole 2025) as Suzuki, and Phillip Rhodes (La traviata 2024) as Sharpless.


Kindly supported by The Alexander Gibson Circle
Part of Scottish Opera's 2026/27 Season
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