Madama Butterfly
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40 free Madama Butterfly trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cio-Cio-San is one of the great roles in opera: a teenage bride who gives up everything for a visiting American and then waits, year after year, for him to come back. Puccini built Madama Butterfly around her, and the part asks a singer to grow from a hopeful girl into a tragic heroine in a single evening. This quiz follows the opera from the wedding on the hill to the final scene. It covers who Cio-Cio-San is and the people around her, the moments and music audiences remember, how the story reached Puccini from a magazine tale and a stage play, and what happened when the opera first met the public. It ends with the films, musicals and records that borrowed from it. It is written for opera-goers who want to test what they remember, for students meeting the work for the first time, and for anyone who has heard the name Cio-Cio-San and wants to know her story.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Japanese port city does Puccini set Madama Butterfly, in a hillside house overlooking the harbour?
Nagasaki
Nagasaki still marks the link: statues of Puccini and the soprano Tamaki Miura, a famous Cio-Cio-San, stand in its hillside Glover Garden.
Q 02Which 1989 hit musical by the creators of Les Misérables retells the story of Puccini's Madama Butterfly?
Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon moves the tale to the Vietnam War, trading the sailor and his bride for a United States Marine and a Vietnamese bargirl.
Q 03Which American rock band named its 1996 album Pinkerton after the faithless sailor in Puccini's Madama Butterfly?
Weezer
Weezer's singer Rivers Cuomo listened to the opera every night after shows, and its sadness pushed him toward a darker second album.
Q 04Why did New York's Metropolitan Opera keep Madama Butterfly off its stage from 1942 through 1945?
War with Japan
War with Japan took the opera off the bill; otherwise it has been heard in virtually every Met season since Puccini supervised its first staging there in 1907.
Q 05Which patriotic American tune does Puccini quote in Madama Butterfly when Pinkerton raises a toast to his homeland?
The Star-Spangled Banner
The Star-Spangled Banner rings out as Pinkerton and the consul drink to America, a musical badge Puccini pins on his American characters.
Q 06Whose dagger does Cio-Cio-San use to end her own life in the final scene of Puccini's Madama Butterfly?
Her father's
Her father's blade came from the emperor with an invitation to kill himself, and he obeyed; she keeps it in a narrow box she will not open for Pinkerton.
Q 07What does Cio-Cio-San place in her young son's hands just before her death at the end of Madama Butterfly?
An American flag
An American flag goes into the boy's hands after she blindfolds him, and she then steps behind a screen to die as Pinkerton rushes in too late.
Q 08Which famous Act 2 aria does Cio-Cio-San sing in Madama Butterfly as she imagines Pinkerton's ship sailing home?
Un bel dì, vedremo
Un bel dì, vedremo pictures a thread of smoke on the horizon and a white ship entering the harbour, a reunion that never arrives the way she dreams it.
Q 09Which famous opera house staged the very first performance of Puccini's Madama Butterfly on 17 February 1904?
La Scala
La Scala heard the opera only once in that form: the Milan audience booed and hissed so much that Puccini withdrew the score after opening night.
Q 10How does Cio-Cio-San earn her living before her wedding in Madama Butterfly, after her noble family loses its fortune?
As a geisha
As a geisha she supported herself once the family money was gone; at fifteen, she tells the two Americans, she already counts as old.
Q 11Which famous piece of music accompanies Cio-Cio-San's all-night vigil as she waits for Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly?
Humming Chorus
Humming Chorus voices sing without words as Suzuki and the child fall asleep, leaving Cio-Cio-San alone and awake until morning.
Q 12Why does the Bonze burst into Cio-Cio-San's wedding party in Madama Butterfly and turn her relatives against her?
She became a Christian
She became a Christian in secret at the mission the day before, wanting to pray to the same god as Pinkerton; the Bonze calls it an abomination.
Q 13Why does Cio-Cio-San turn down the wealthy Prince Yamadori's proposal in Act 2 of Madama Butterfly?
Q 21Which northern Italian city hosted the triumphant revised version of Madama Butterfly on 28 May 1904?
Brescia
Brescia cheered the new version just three months after Milan had jeered the original, and the opera's success grew from there.
Q 22Solomiya Krushelnytska, the soprano who rescued Madama Butterfly at its 1904 revival, was of which nationality?
Ukrainian
Ukrainian diva Krushelnytska sang the revised title role, and Puccini later gave her his portrait inscribed to the most beautiful and charming Butterfly.
Q 23Which celebrated conductor led Madama Butterfly's first performance outside Italy, in Buenos Aires in July 1904?
Arturo Toscanini
She says she is married
She says she is married already; told that Japanese law treats a deserted woman as divorced, she answers that only American law binds her.
Q 14Who arrives with Pinkerton in Act 3 of Madama Butterfly, hoping to raise Cio-Cio-San's child?
His American wife
His American wife, Kate, has agreed to bring the boy up, and Pinkerton leaves her and the consul to break the news because he cannot face Cio-Cio-San.
Q 15Which superstar tenor sang Pinkerton when the Metropolitan Opera first staged Madama Butterfly in 1907?
Enrico Caruso
Enrico Caruso sang opposite Geraldine Farrar with Puccini supervising, yet the composer wrote that his leading man was lazy and too pleased with himself.
Q 16Puccini was moved by the play Madame Butterfly in London in 1900 despite which obstacle?
He barely knew English
He barely knew English, yet the heroine's night-long vigil struck him as ideal for an opera; by the producer's own later account, he hurried backstage to beg for the rights.
Q 17Puccini first saw the play Madame Butterfly while in London to supervise the British premiere of which of his operas?
Tosca
Tosca brought him to London in the summer of 1900, and the one-act play he saw at the Duke of York's Theatre there gave him the subject of his next opera.
Q 18Which American playwright and producer staged the one-act play Madame Butterfly in New York in 1900?
David Belasco
David Belasco gave Puccini two operas: his Western drama The Girl of the Golden West became La fanciulla del West in 1910.
Q 19John Luther Long, who wrote the 1898 short story Madame Butterfly, earned his living in which profession?
Lawyer
Lawyer John Luther Long drew the tale from the recollections of his sister Jennie Correll, who had lived in Japan with her missionary husband.
Q 20What major change did Puccini make to Madama Butterfly after its disastrous first night in Milan?
He split Act 2 in two
He split Act 2 in two because the first night ran its long second half with no interval; the new break falls during the all-night vigil.
Arturo Toscanini took the opera to Argentina with the same soprano who had endured the Milan fiasco a few months earlier.
Q 24How did the audience at Madama Butterfly's 1904 premiere respond when bird whistles sounded during the sunrise scene?
With animal noises
With animal noises of their own: nightingale whistles had been handed to planted audience members to deepen the dawn, and the house took them as a cue.
Q 25Which American president gives his name to Pinkerton's ship, sighted in the harbour in Act 2 of Madama Butterfly?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is the ship Cio-Cio-San picks out with her telescope, and she and Suzuki fill the house with flowers before settling down to wait.
Q 26Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly shares his first and middle names with which signer of the Declaration of Independence?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is the name read out at the wedding, though at the first performances he was introduced as Sir Francis Blummy Pinkerton.
Q 27Pinkerton's house lease in Madama Butterfly can be cancelled any month, but for what term does it officially run?
999 years
999 years is the term of the lease and, Pinkerton boasts, of his marriage contract too, each with the option to cancel every month.
Q 28What name does Cio-Cio-San give her son in Madama Butterfly, where John Luther Long's story called him Trouble?
Sorrow
Sorrow, Dolore in the libretto, is meant to be temporary: she says the boy will be renamed Joy on the day Pinkerton comes back.
Q 29Pinkerton promises Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly that he will return in the season when which birds build their nests?
Robins
Robins nesting in spring was his promise; three years on, Cio-Cio-San and Suzuki are close to destitution and he has still not come.
Q 30What is the trade of Goro, who opens Madama Butterfly by showing Pinkerton around his new house?
Marriage broker
Marriage broker Goro arranged Pinkerton's match, and three years later he keeps trying to marry Cio-Cio-San off again to a rich suitor.