The concept for this new production Madama Butterfly was been influenced the work’s literary background: the western perception of Japan present throughout the autobiographical novel of Pierre Loti (Madame Chrysanthème, 1887) and the diary treatment of the subject by Félix Régamey (The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanthème, 1894). These two sources present the protagonist Madame Chrysanthème is in two completely different characterizations: in Loti, she is a dissolute and licentious woman, while in Regamey she is a needy, extremely sensitive creature. David Belasco, meanwhile, (who wrote the play (1904)—derived via an 1898 short story by American John Luther Long—that was the main reference for Giacomo Puccini’s librettists Illica and Giacosa, describes her as a victim of a fatal and irresistible love.