Madam Butterfly
A mood image evoking the quiet beauty and melancholy of Madame Butterfly—a place where someone might be waiting, remembering, or watching from afar.
QUICK F A C T S
- ✦ Premiere: 1995, created for The Australian Ballet
✦ Choreography: Stanton Welch
✦ Music: Giacomo Puccini, adapted for ballet by John Lanchbery
✦ Original Cio-Cio-San: Vicki Attard
✦ Design: Peter Farmer, who created the sets and costumes
✦ Based On: Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly and the story of Cio-Cio-San
Israel Ballet dancers rehearsing Madame Butterfly.
S U M M A R Y
What happens when a love story begins with hope—but one person never intends to stay? Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly transforms Puccini’s famous tragedy into a full-length ballet about Cio-Cio-San, a young Japanese woman who falls deeply in love with Lieutenant Pinkerton, an American naval officer. She believes their marriage is the beginning of a new life, while Pinkerton treats it far more casually. As Cio-Cio-San waits faithfully for him to return, the ballet follows the growing distance between the future she imagines and the reality unfolding around her.
Mood image evoking the elegance and dreamlike atmosphere of Cio-Cio-San’s world.
Israel Ballet dancers during a stage rehearsal of Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly.
Welch created the ballet for The Australian Ballet in 1995, making it his first full-length ballet. Rather than simply translating the opera into dance, he reshaped the story into two acts with a prologue and worked with conductor and arranger John Lanchbery to adapt Puccini's music for the ballet stage. The choreography gives Cio-Cio-San's emotions a physical language: sweeping lifts, delicate balances, and intimate pas de deux show her falling in love, while later movement becomes increasingly charged with longing, uncertainty, and despair. Vicki Attard created the role of Cio-Cio-San at the world premiere.
The ballet's visual world is almost as important as its choreography. Designer Peter Farmer created the sets and costumes, using Japanese-inspired screens, lanterns, flowing fabrics, and soft colors to create a world that can feel beautiful and dreamlike while the story becomes increasingly tragic. One of its most striking images appears in the opening: Cio-Cio-San emerges behind a chrysanthemum-covered scrim with enormous butterfly-like wings, hinting at both her transformation and her fragility. Beneath all that beauty is a story about love, cultural misunderstanding, loyalty, and betrayal—and that contrast is what makes Madame Butterfly so haunting.
Israel Ballet dancers rehearsing Madame Butterfly.
E N C O R E
✦ On Today’s Stage
Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly continues to be performed by ballet companies around the world, including The Australian Ballet and the Israel Ballet, keeping this modern interpretation of Cio-Cio-San’s story alive for new audiences.
✦ Iconic Interpreters
Vicki Attard originated the role of Cio-Cio-San at the ballet’s 1995 world premiere, creating the central character through Welch’s choreography.
✦ Legacy
As Stanton Welch’s first full-length ballet, Madame Butterfly established a major narrative work in his choreographic career and demonstrated how a familiar story could be transformed from opera into a powerful language of movement.