Knowing the pornographic and mechanical sources for this melody will certainly color our emotional response to this archetypal, cross-cultural tragedy.

This is especially true when the tune is heard at a fast music-box clip, complete with imitation birdcalls, as dawn breaks in Act II after Butterfly’s long night anticipating Pinkerton’s return. Scholars have praised Puccini’s “Japanese orchestrations,” but his setting of “Shiba Mo” can best be described as sounding like a music box. The tune also appears at the climax of the Act I love duet, as Pinkerton eagerly leads Butterfly into the house to consummate their marriage. Butterfly sings the whole melody, in the same key as on the Guinness music box, as she explains to Pinkerton that she has severed all ties to her Japanese past and will devote herself entirely to him. The melody appears prominently at the climax to Butterfly’s entrance, as she presents herself to her lustful American bridegroom, Lieutenant Pinkerton. The specific moments when “Shiba Mo” appears in “Madama Butterfly” and Puccini’s sense of humor, said to have been rakish, suggest that he knew what the song was about. This folk song, which also turns up in Chinese operas, is delivered in the voice of a male lover celebrating 18 parts of a woman’s body in explicit detail, moving caress by caress from head to toe. Kubler and Ping Wang, identified the tune as “Shiba Mo,” or “The 18 Touches,” an erotic song often banned in China. Some musicological detective work, with help from the Chinese language scholars Cornelius C.

The main theme for Butterfly, a geisha, is labeled “She Pah Moh” on the tune sheet.

Fortunately the Guinness box includes its original tune sheet, listing the folk-song titles in Chinese and in transliteration, which turns this music box into a Rosetta stone.

For decades, in an effort to reconstruct Puccini’s models, scholars have been stitching together fragments of published Japanese songs that he might have seen.

Puccini opera songs