Royal Opera stages Madama Butterfly with changes to respect Japanese culture

Rehearsals for Madama Butterfly at the Royal Opera House. Sonoko Kamimura, an expert in Japanese movement, has been working on the production. Photograph: Laura Aziz

It’s a dramatic masterpiece and a key component of any opera house’s core repertory – but Madama Butterfly was also a product of its time, riddled with stereotypes and racist depictions of Asian people.

So what does it mean to stage Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 classic in 2022? That’s the question the Royal Opera House set out to answer when it launched a year-long consultation on how to better respect Japanese culture in its production.