Conducted by Herbert von Karajan; Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo, Christa Ludwig. Vienna, 1974

There is little to be said, except that this Cio-Cio San is a mature young woman, not the 15-year-old she had probably been told to say she was, though she had started her career as a geisha-girl at about that age.

The attraction that American and Western culture had for such an upwardly mobile Japanese girl, eager to leave a life of bondage, must have been very strong. Hence Cio-Cio San’s eagerness to become a Christian and wave a US flag, and her thrill at becoming the wife of an American sailor and mother of a little American.

In this production, the honour of the American navy is protected. Pinkerton never wears uniform. It is clear that Pinkerton was already planning his ‘proper’ American marriage before he marries Cio-Cio San, which he does because it is an apparently ‘respectable’ way of making her his sexual partner.

Consul Sharpless is perhaps well named? If he had been sharper, he might have manipulated Pinkerton away from a marriage which he must have known, as a man of the world, was a cynical deception.

Butterfly is deeply moving, because she is so deeply, innocently, romantic. Through the music we share in her delusion, and so are profoundly shocked and moved by her end.

The only albeit slight consolation is that it is quite clear that Pinkerton knows what he has done and that his life will never be the same again.