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84Opera plots - Puccini's Tosca
There are not too many laughs in Tosca, which is based on a drama by the French playwright Victorien Sardou, set in Rome in 1800. The play was first performed in 1887, and it first attracted the attention of...
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78Madame Butterfly's Cocoon Pets
Sarge's joke of calling his mother-in-law, Madame Butterfly and then always amending the nickname to Madame Ailanthus came about when he learned that her silkworms come from the Ailanthus Silk moth, not some beautiful butterfly. The differences between a moth and a butterfly for the most part are very obvious. The butterflies wear knobs on each of their antennae. The moths, with a few exceptions, lack those knobs, or possess plumed antennae. Butterfly cocoons are sort of a hardened integumen
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79Opera plots - Puccini's Turandot
The plots of great operas are often difficult to fathom, partly because opera composers are generally more interested in writing great music than telling a believable story. The plot is merely a peg on which...
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77My Favorite Opera Arias and Duets
This Italian opera, Turandot, was unfinished by Giacomo Puccini. He suffered from throat cancer and died from a heart attack before he could finish it. Franco Alfano, a friend of Puccini, completed the score, using Puccini's notes for the final...
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67Opera plots - Puccini's La Boheme
The willing suspension of disbelief is required for any dramatic performance, but this seems to be especially so in the case of opera. For one thing, people just don't go around singing at each other, at...
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68Opera plots - Puccini's Madame Butterfly
This is one of the best-known and loved of all operas, both for its superb music and its plot, a tragedy of broken faith in which the whole audience longs to scream out to Butterfly, "don't trust him!" The...
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65Zhang Yimou: Use the Gentle to Overcome the Strong
...closely integrates the clash of two major social concepts – individualism and conformity. Asian culture is dominated by the Confucian teachings of the “Ancient Three Bonds” (subordination of subject to ruler, son to father, and of wife to...
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