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Madama Butterfly is a 1904 opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian-language libretto written by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. The plot is based on the short story "Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther Long in turn based on stories told to Long by his sister Jennie Correll and on the semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti. The opera features Pinkerton, a U.S. naval officer, who rents a house in Nagasaki, Japan, for himself and Cio-Cio-San (nicknamed Butterfly), a 15-year-old Japanese girl whom he is marrying for convenience and intends to leave once he finds an American wife. This watercolor illustration on cardboard, from the archives of the music publisher Casa Ricordi, depicts the scenic design for a 1906 production Act 1 of Madama Butterfly, set in the hills near Nagasaki.Illustration credit: Alexandre Bailly and Marcel Jambon; restored by Adam Cuerden