Madame Butterfly

Madame Butterfly (1900), a one‐act play by David Belasco and John Luther Long. [Herald Square Theatre, 24 perf.] Cho‐Cho‐San ( Blanche Bates), a geisha, falls in love with an American naval officer, Lieutenant Pinkerton ( Frank Worthing). When he leaves for home, he promises to be true and to return. The American consul, Mr. Sharpless ( Claude Gillingwater), later informs her that Pinkerton has remarried. She refuses to believe it. However, when the fleet returns and the Consul's story is confirmed, she kills herself. Most historians suggest the dramatization was entirely the work of producer‐playwright Belasco, who used Long's short story as his source. Whether or not this was the case, their subsequent joint efforts appear to have been more genuine collaborations. Added as an afterpiece during the run of the farce Naughty Anthony, the play was looked on as static and talky, but nevertheless a theatrically effective character study. The production was mostly remembered for a stunning silent sequence when Cho‐Cho‐San waits through the night for the dawn and the return of Pinkerton, Belasco's subtle lighting moving from dusk to moonlight to sunrise. The play might well have been totally forgotten had not Puccini later created an opera from it and years later it served as the source material for Miss Saigon (1990).