I am sure that this horrible impression will soon be wiped out of our minds

Premiering on 17 February 1904 at La Scala in Milan, Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly was a great fiasco, often described as "one of the most terrible flops in Italian opera history". Despite the celebrated cast, including the 32-year-old Italian soprano Rosina Storchio as Cio-Cio-San (Madame Butterfly), the show was greeted with boos and laughter from the audience. The disastrous premiere was partly attributed to Puccini's late completion of the score, resulting in the performance being under-rehearsed. Also, the length of the second act was too long to hold the audience's attention.

After the fiasco of the premiere, Puccini withdrew his opera and revised it, inserting an intermission into the long second act while also making other changes. The revised version of Madama Butterfly premiered on 28 May 1904 in Brescia, this time to great success and with a new soprano, the Ukrainian singer Solomiya Krushelnytska. In later years, Puccini revised his opera several more times, with his fifth version now being the standard version. Despite its poor start in Milan, today Madama Butterfly is one of the most popular and most performed operas in the world. 

On the day of the premiere, Puccini wrote this note to Rosina Storchio, his first Madame Butterfly, wishing her good luck while confident that the show would succeed.

Milan

February 17, 1904

Dear Rosina,

My good wishes are superfluous! 

So true, so delicate, so moving is your great art that the public must succumb to it!

And I hope that through you I am speeding to victory!

Tonight then - with sure confidence and much affection, dear child!

After the disastrous opening, Storchio vowed never to perform the role of Madame Butterfly in Italy again. A rather embarrassing incident which had occurred during the performance likely contributed to her decision. At one point, her kimono accidentally billowed up —possibly due to a draft— and some people in the audience shouted remarks like "The butterfly is pregnant" and "There is the little Toscanini". The jeers alluded to Storchio's then highly-publicised affair with Arturo Toscanini, the renowned Italian conductor. 

With his Butterfly leaving him, Puccini wrote to her five days after the premiere.

Milan

February 22, 1904

My dear Rosina,

Here is the photograph which I was to give you. Forgive me for not sending it at once. I had none left.

And so, my Butterfly, the love-sick little maiden, would leave me. You seem in your departure to be taking away the best, the most poetical part, of my work. I think that Butterfly without Rosina Storchio becomes a thing without a soul. What a shame! After so many anxious fears, after pouring out such riches of your keen and delicate intelligence, to receive the reward of brutality! What a disgrace it was! But I am sure that this horrible impression will soon be wiped out of our minds, and so, with warm affection and confidence in the future, I wish you good luck.

Ever yours ...

Several months later, in July 1904, Storchio enjoyed great success in Buenos Aires in Madama Butterfly's first show outside Italy, and the next year —on the occasion of Puccini's visit to the Argentine capital and in his presence— she reprised the role. Already a successful soprano before she starred as Butterfly, Storchio continued to perform in various operas and returned to the Italian stage towards the end of her career (e.g. performing the titular role in Pietro Mascagni's Lodoletta in Rome (1917)). The last time she played Butterfly was in Barcelona in 1923; with her voice already in significant decline, it would be her final public performance.

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Source letters: Letters of Giacomo Puccini (1931), by Giuseppe Adami; translated by Ena Makin

Via: Internet Archive

-Image top: Giacomo Puccini, photographed in April 1908

-Image bottom: Rosina Storchio, in the right photo as Cio-Cio-San aka Madame Butterfly; while she didn't have a big, powerful voice, Storchio was praised for her sensitive performances, focusing on emotion and character interpretation. 

Source images: Wikimedia Commons