Giacomo Puccini was in London in 1900, when he saw and became fascinated by the theatre play Madame Butterfly, by David Belasco, which staged the story of a doomed love between a Japanese woman and an American sailor. Puccini was so impressed that he wasted no time in securing the rights for an operatic version of the same story. In order to be faithful to the environment he wanted to portray, he devoted himself to researching Japanese music, which helped him enrich the score of one of the most celebrated operas ever.