Japanese music is arid and angular, and yet so great is Puccini's skill in combining creative imagination and reflection that he knew how to make it blossom like a rose.

Pity that he could not wholly overcome its rhythmical monotony.

Japanese melody runs almost uninterruptedly through his instrumental score, giving way at intervals to the Italian style of lyricism when the characters and passions become universal rather than local types.

Structurally, his score rests on the Wagnerian method, in that the vocal part floats on an uninterrupted instrumental current.

In the orchestral part the tunes which he borrowed from the popular music of Japan are continuously recurrent, and fragments of them are used as the connecting links of the whole fabric.