They remained with Puccini for his next three operas and probably his greatest successes: La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly.

The original version of Madama Butterfly, premiered at La Scala on February 17, 1904, was initially greeted with great hostility ( probably largely owing to inadequate rehearsals ).

This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggiero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci that came virtually to dominate the world's opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini's La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly.

He conducted the BNOC frequently over the next two years, and made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with Madama Butterfly in 1928.

Gelb began his tenure by opening the 2006-2007 season with a colorful and highly stylized production of Madama Butterfly by the English director Anthony Minghella originally staged for English National Opera.

Gheorghiu said in a statement that she had missed some rehearsals to spend time with her husband, who was singing at the Met in Roméo et Juliette and rehearsing for Puccini's Madama Butterfly and added " I have sung ' Boheme ' hundreds of times, and thought missing a few rehearsals wouldn't be a tragedy.

* Madama Butterfly ( Giacomo Puccini ): Tullio Serafin conducting the Orchestra dell ' Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with Carlo Bergonzi, Fiorenza Cossotto, Enzo Sordello.

Her 1966 recording of Madama Butterfly with Carlo Bergonzi and Rolando Panerai, under Barbirolli for EMI is frequently referred to as definitive.

One of the highlights of the afternoon program was a moving performance of the love duet from Madama Butterly with soprano Licia Albanese and tenor Frederick Jaegel.

She appeared there in several operas for the next two seasons, including the London premiere of Madama Butterfly with Caruso.

She returned to Philadelphia in 1967 to sing the title roles in Puccini's Tosca and Madama Butterfly and to the Met to sing three Verdi heroines: Leonora in Il trovatore opposite Richard Tucker as Manrico, Desdemona in Otello opposite James McCracken in the title role, and Violetta in La traviata with Tucker and George Shirley alternating as Alfredo.

The first African American woman to sing with the company was soprano Camilla Williams as the title heroine in Madama Butterfly in 1946.

Freni starred in the 1975 film Madama Butterfly opposite Plácido Domingo, with von Karajan conducting and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle directing, and in 1976, played Susanna in the Ponnelle film Le nozze di Figaro, which also featured Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Hermann Prey.

One such tour, in 1967, consisted of two performances of Madama Butterfly, one of La Traviata, and two of Ginastera's Don Rodrigo, each with Plácido Domingo singing the main tenor role.

Even uncompleted, the Villa Madama, in Rome, Italy, with its loggia and segmental columned garden court and its casino with an open center, was one of the most famous and imitated villas and terraced gardens of the High Renaissance.

However, he came out of retirement in 1981 to appear in two productions ( Madama Butterfly and Semele ) with Washington Opera and in 1987 sang in a live German radio broadcast of Kurt Weill's cantata, Ballad of the Magna Carta.

She returned to Japan in 1985 for her much-celebrated first performance at home with the Fujiwara Opera troupe, as Butterfly in Puccini's " Madama Butterfly.

Before long, other statues appeared on the scene, forming a kind of public salon or academy, the " Congress of the Wits " ( Congresso degli Arguti ), with Pasquino always the leader, and the sculptures that Romans called Marphurius, Abbot Luigi, Il Facchino, Madama Lucrezia, and Il Babbuino as his outspoken colleagues.

Besides his recordings with Callas, he also made complete EMI sets of Madama Butterfly ( opposite Victoria de los Ángeles, 1954 ) and La traviata ( with Antonietta Stella and Tito Gobbi, 1955 ).

The tenor's other recordings include: Wagner's Die Walküre ( with Birgit Nilsson and Hans Hotter, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, 1965 ); Puccini's Tosca ( excerpts in German, opposite Anja Silja, conducted by Lorin Maazel, 1966 ); Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos ( 1968 ); Fidelio ( 1969 ); Wagner's Lohengrin ( 1971 ); Puccini's Madama Butterfly ( with Maria Chiara, 1972 ); Saint-Saëns ' Samson and Delilah ( 1973 ); Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten ( 1977 ); Hindemith's Mathis der Maler ( with Fischer-Dieskau and William Cochran, 1979 ); Franz Schmidt's Notre Dame ( 1988 ); and, from the Bayreuth Festival, Die Walküre ( with Nilsson and Theo Adam, 1967 ) and Parsifal ( with Dame Gwyneth Jones, led by Pierre Boulez, 1970 ).

Parton had three number-one singles in 1974 (" Jolene ", " I Will Always Love You " and " Love is Like a Butterfly "), and a further chart-topper in 1975 with " The Bargain Store ".

He sang in a duet of his 1972 song " Changes " with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film Shrek 2.

* Butterfly koi （ 鰭長錦鯉 、 ひれながにしきごい ） is a hybrid of koi and Asian carp with long flowing fins.

After meeting Simon King in a Chelsea shopping centre in 1969, he joined the band Opal Butterfly, but the group soon folded, having previously failed to raise enough interest with their preceding CBS singles.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly uses the POV shot with a tilt shift focus to imitate the lead protagonist loss of sight in one eye.

Another strand of his 2000 AD work was Sláine, a barbarian fantasy based on Celtic mythology and neo-paganism, which he co-created with his then wife Angela Kincaid ( with whom he also created the children's series of books, The Butterfly Children ).

The album was a quick breakthrough and because of this Twain performed selected international venues and television shows including two CMA Fan Fair performances with Nashville guitarists Randy Thomas ( co-writer of the song " Butterfly Kisses "), Dan Schafer, Chris Rodriguez, Russ Taff, Hugh McDonald bass player of Bon Jovi, Dave Malachowski and Stanley T., formerly with The Beach Boys.

Pinkerton admits to Sharpless that he does not know whether he is really in love or just infatuated, but he is bewitched with Butterfly ’ s innocence, charm and beauty, like a butterfly fluttering around and then landing with silent grace, so beautiful " that I must have her, even though I injure her butterfly wings ".

Pinkerton, Butterfly and their guests continue the celebration with many toasts.

The Bonze is shocked at the American, and he orders all the guests to leave with him, saying to Butterfly, " You have renounced us, and we renounce you.

) Pinkerton tells Butterfly that the " Night is falling ", and Butterfly answers that " with it comes darkness and peace.

) Butterfly pleads with Pinkerton to " Love me, please.

Butterfly assures Suzuki that Pinkerton will return, because he took care to arrange for the Consul to pay the rent and to fit the house with locks to keep out the mosquitoes, relatives and troubles.

Suzuki tells Butterfly that foreign husbands never return to their Japanese wives, but Butterfly replies furiously that Pinkerton had assured her, on the very last morning they were together, " Oh, Butterfly, my little wife, I shall return with the roses, when the earth is full of joy, when the robin makes his nest.

Butterfly cries that, if Pinkerton never returned, she would go back to entertaining people with her songs, or, better, die.

Butterfly is upset with Sharpless and instructs Suzuki to show him out.

Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, into a family with five generations of musical history behind them, including the composer Domenico Puccini.

In 1880, with the help of a relative and a grant, Puccini enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to study composition with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti, Amilcare Ponchielli, and Antonio Bazzini.

Puccini had eloped with his former piano student, the married Elvira Gemignani, and Ricordi's associates were willing to turn a blind eye to his life style as long as he was successful.

When Edgar failed, they suggested to Ricordi that he should drop Puccini, but Ricordi said that he would stay with him and made him an allowance from his own pocket until his next opera.

Four other librettists were then involved with the opera, as Puccini constantly changed his mind about the structure of the piece.

After his death, a mausoleum was created in the Villa Puccini and the composer is buried there in the chapel, along with his wife and son who died later.

Puccini had been considering an opera on this theme since he saw the play Tosca by Victorien Sardou in 1889, when he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou's permission for the work to be made into an opera: " I see in this Tosca the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music.

In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was scandal after Puccini's wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini.

In 1909, Puccini's wife Elvira publicly accused Doria Manfredi, a maid working for the Puccini family, of having an affair with the composer.

According to documents found in the possession of a descendant of the Manfredi family, Nadia Manfredi, in 2007, Puccini was actually having an affair with Giulia Manfredi, Doria's cousin.

Some music critics and interpreters of Puccini's work have speculated that the psychological effects of this incident on Puccini interfered with his ability to complete compositions later in his career, and also influenced the development of Puccinian characters such as Liu ( from Turandot ), a slave girl who dies tragically by suicide.

Giacomo Puccini with conductor Arturo Toscanini

This was commissioned by, and first performed at, the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 10 December 1910 with Met stars Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn for whom Puccini created the leading roles of Dick Johnson and Minnie.

Puccini succeeded in mastering the orchestra as no other Italian had done before him, creating new forms by manipulating structures inherited from the great Italian tradition, loading them with bold harmonic progressions which had little or nothing to do with what was happening then in Italy, though they were in step with the work of French, Austrian and German colleagues.

Composers such as Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith and Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance.

That year, he had disputes with Ruggiero Leoncavallo and Giacomo Puccini.

In October he was reconciled with Puccini.

Puccini first began working on Turandot in March 1920 after meeting with librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.

Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the libretto which was not considered complete even by Puccini himself.