Who composed the opera Madama Butterfly?

Puccini, and its premiere at La Scala in 1904 was a disaster - whistling, catcalls, animal noises from the audience, some of it apparently organised by rivals. He withdrew it immediately, revised it substantially, split the long second act in two, and it succeeded three months later. He called the first night the greatest humiliation of his life.

He researched it obsessively, which was his habit. He collected Japanese folk melodies, met the wife of the Japanese ambassador to learn about names and customs, and worked several authentic tunes into the score - and the result is still a European opera about an imagined Japan, with a fifteen-year-old bride abandoned by an American naval officer who considers the marriage temporary and legally non-binding.

That is why it is now performed with some discomfort. The opera itself is not naive about Pinkerton - he is written as callous and the libretto gives him no defence - but the staging tradition of white performers in makeup persisted for a century, and companies have spent the last two decades reconsidering it. Puccini died in 1924 leaving Turandot unfinished, and at its premiere Toscanini stopped the orchestra at the point where the composer's writing ended and turned to the audience to say so.