Un bel dí, from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
A few years ago, the Metropolitan Opera presented Madama Butterfly on its Live In HD series. Familiar with the opera and its story of the ill-fated title charcter Ciocio-san and her poor, betrayed heart, my husband and I hopped over to the movie theater and cozied into our stadium seats all geared up for some great opera.
The orchestra began to play, the singers began to sing and within 15 minutes I was bawling like a baby. True story: had to use all of my popcorn grease napkins to dab my eyes. Ciocio-san’s unwavering faith that her beloved will return for her, all the foreshadowings of her sad destiny, not to mention Puccini’s heartrendingly glorious music, literally moved me to tears.
I didn’t stop crying until we got home. Needless to say, it was a long drive.
“Un bel dí” is Ciocio-san’s signature aria and one of the all-time great arias in the opera repertory. In it, Butterfly sings that “one beautiful day” her lover, the U.S. Navy Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, will return to Japan for her.
She then elaborates in painful detail on her vision of how that reunion will play out – she will see white smoke from a ship sailing into the harbor, she will see her beloved disembark and walk up the hill towards her, but she won’t run down to meet him. No, she will stay put and wait for him to come to her. She clearly has dreamed of Pinkerton’s return every moment since his departure – every pet name he will call her, every tilt of the head and blink of the eyes, every nuance of emotion all mapped out.
If you know how the opera ends, then your heart can’t help but break for Butterfly.
How this music can change your life: The ancient Greeks spoke of great drama as a means of catharsis, or cleansing one’s inner landscape through the release of emotions. Madama Butterfly is catharsis city.
Here is soprano Renata Tebaldi’s classic performance of the aria:
