Madama Butterfly

An Italian composes an opera that he describes as a "Japanese tragedy" after seeing an English-language play about the tragic fate of a geisha who is abandoned by an American and breaks down in pain - with (or despite) this somewhat adventurous initial situation, Giacomo Puccini created one of the most touching operas ever with his Madama Butterfly.

The story of a love that fails due to a lack of understanding for one another, cultural narrow-mindedness and an imbalance of feelings encompasses deeply human emotions, longings and fallibilities and continues to move us across cultural divides right up to the present day. Music becomes the all-connecting element here, with which every impossibility can be cancelled out: In all the improbability of the narrative, not only passion, beauty and pain emerge, but also art between emotion and politics.