"MADAMA BUTTERFLY" This is the book of the generation of "Madama Butterfly": An adventure in Japan begat Pierre Loti's "Madame Chrysantheme"; "Madame Chrysantheme" begat John Luther Long's "Madame Butterfly," a story; "Madame Butterfly," the story, begat "Madame Butterfly," a play by David Belasco; "Madame Butterfly," the play, begat "Madama Butterfly," the opera by Giacomo Puccini.

The heroine of the roving French romanticist is therefore seen in her third incarnation in the heroine of the opera book which L.Illica and G.Giacosa made for Puccini.

But in operatic essence she is still older, for, as Dr.Korngold, a Viennese critic, pointed out, Selica is her grandmother and Lakme her cousin.
Even this does not exhaust her family history; there is something like a bar sinister in her escutcheon.

Mr.Belasco's play was not so much begotten, conceived, or born of admiration for Mr.Long's book as it was of despair wrought by the failure of another play written by Mr.
Belasco.

This play was a farce entitled "Naughty Anthony," created by Mr.Belasco in a moment of aesthetic aberration for production at the Herald Square Theatre, in New York, in the spring of 1900.