In fashioning Madame Butterfly, librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa consulted several literary stories written by Westerners with connections to Japan. Composer Giacomo Puccini gathered examples of Japanese music, which he used liberally in the opera's score. While the opera draws heavily on Western tropes about Japan and East Asia, it also contains elements of truth—a combination that has captivated audiences worldwide for over 120 years. Join us as we examine this tension between fiction and history, fantasy and reality, within Puccini's “tragedia giapponese” (“Japanese tragedy”).