40 Fun Facts About M. Butterfly

How does Rene Gallimard's story end in the final scene of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly?

He stabs himself, dying exactly as the heroine does in the opera he adores. By then he has dressed as her, completing the play's reversal of roles.

The real couple behind M. Butterfly, Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, first met in Beijing at what kind of event?

A Christmas party at the French embassy brought them together in December 1964. Shi arrived dressed as a man and only later claimed to be a woman in disguise.

Rene Gallimard in M. Butterfly is unaware that female roles in traditional Beijing opera were long played by whom?

Male actors took the women's parts because women had been banned from the stage. That tradition is what lets Song Liling's disguise pass for twenty years.

John Lone, the Song Liling of the 1993 M. Butterfly film, had earlier played the title role in which Oscar-winning epic?

The Last Emperor cast him as Puyi from the age of 18 into his sixties. Trained in Chinese opera as a child in Hong Kong, he did his own singing as Song.

In David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, the French diplomat Rene Gallimard has been convicted of which crime?

Treason is the charge, because he passed classified documents to China through his lover, Song Liling. The trial turns him into a laughingstock around the world.

Which Italian composer wrote Madama Butterfly, the 1904 opera that M. Butterfly borrows from and turns upside down?

Giacomo Puccini saw the story as a one-act play in London and set it to music. The first version was poorly received in Milan, so he revised it within months.

Which Chinese upheaval forces Song Liling into farm labour and parts the lovers in Act 2 of M. Butterfly?

The Cultural Revolution, launched in 1966, denounced artists and intellectuals. Song is made to confess to being corrupted by a foreigner, and Gallimard is ordered home.

Which English actor played the diplomat Rene Gallimard in the 1993 film version of M. Butterfly?

Jeremy Irons took the part soon after winning the Best Actor Oscar for Reversal of Fortune. More than sixty men auditioned to play Song opposite him.

Which American actor originated the role of Rene Gallimard when M. Butterfly opened on Broadway in 1988?

John Lithgow earned a Tony nomination as the deluded diplomat. David Dukes was one of several replacements who took over the part later in the run of 777 performances.

Which actor made his Broadway debut as Song Liling in M. Butterfly and won a Tony Award for the role?

BD Wong is the only actor to win the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Clarence Derwent and Theatre World awards for one role. He later played Henry Wu in Jurassic Park.

In M. Butterfly, the womanizing Marc who keeps appearing in Rene Gallimard's memories is what to him?

A school friend from Aix-en-Provence, Marc is everything Gallimard is not: popular, shameless and forever urging him to be bolder with women.

Why did Rene Gallimard marry Helga, by his own account to the audience in M. Butterfly?

For his career rather than love, he admits. In Beijing the marriage stays childless, and Helga never warms to the country around her.

Renee, the uninhibited student who has an affair with Rene Gallimard in M. Butterfly, comes from which country?

Denmark is home for Renee, a Western student he meets in Beijing. She is the opposite of the modest lover he imagines Song to be: frank, bold and unembarrassed.

Which post does Monsieur Toulon hold in Beijing, making him Rene Gallimard's superior in M. Butterfly?

The French ambassador promotes Gallimard, approves of his affair, and finally sends him back to Paris when his forecasts prove wrong.

Late in Act 1 of M. Butterfly, Rene Gallimard is promoted to run which division of his embassy?

Intelligence becomes his brief just as the affair begins, which is what makes him so useful to Beijing. Song is soon passing on what he lets slip.

Rene Gallimard loses his post in M. Butterfly after wrongly predicting an American victory in which country?

Vietnam undoes him: he insists the East will always submit to a show of Western strength. The play ties that misjudgment to his fantasy about Song.

Which false announcement by Song Liling in Act 2 of M. Butterfly prompts Rene Gallimard to propose marriage?

She is pregnant, Song says, then vanishes to the countryside for three months and comes back carrying a child the authorities have supplied.

In M. Butterfly, what is Comrade Chin to the opera singer who seduces Rene Gallimard during his Beijing posting?

A state handler, Chin collects the secrets Song gathers and later supervises Song's public confession. In the opera scenes she doubles as the maid Suzuki.

When Rene Gallimard acts out the opera for the audience in Act 1 of M. Butterfly, which role does he give himself?

Pinkerton is the American naval officer who marries a Japanese girl and abandons her. Gallimard envies him, yet ends the play as the one betrayed.

In the closing scene of M. Butterfly, Rene Gallimard sits alone and puts on makeup, a wig and which garment?

A kimono completes his transformation into the opera's Japanese heroine. Moments earlier he had clung to it while throwing Song's own clothes away.

Which Western fantasy does David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly set out to expose through Rene Gallimard's delusion?

The submissive Asian woman is the stereotype Song performs and Gallimard cannot see past. The play links that fantasy to the way Western powers misjudged the East.

Bernard Boursicot, the real Frenchman behind M. Butterfly, held which job at the Beijing embassy when the affair began?

Accountant was his first embassy job, taken at the age of 20. The embassy had opened only that year, after France recognised the People's Republic in January 1964.

When Song Liling testifies in the Paris courtroom in Act 3 of M. Butterfly, what is Song wearing?

A man's suit marks Song's first appearance without the disguise. Song calmly tells the judge that Gallimard supported him and their supposed son in Paris for fifteen years.

Madama Butterfly, the opera at the heart of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, is set in which Japanese port city?

Nagasaki is where the American officer rents a hillside house for his young bride. A memorial to the opera's composer stands in the city's Glover Garden.

What is the real name of the heroine called Butterfly in the Italian opera that M. Butterfly reworks?

Cio-Cio-San comes from the Japanese word for butterfly, with a plain honorific added. She is only fifteen when the opera begins.

David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly was named a finalist in 1989, but not the winner, for which major American award?

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama eluded the play, though it had won the Tony for best play. Two later works by its author, Yellow Face and Soft Power, were also finalists without winning.

The director of the 1993 M. Butterfly film felt it was overshadowed by which earlier hit built on a similar surprise?

The Crying Game had sprung its own gender surprise on audiences a year earlier. Hwang later said the stage reveal no longer carried the shock it had in 1988.

After first visiting Song Liling's flat in M. Butterfly, how does Rene Gallimard test his power over her?

He stays away for weeks and ignores her pleading letters, until shame at making her suffer sends him back to her door.

Which French president pardoned Shi Pei Pu, the opera singer whose story inspired M. Butterfly, a year after the trial?

François Mitterrand pardoned Shi in April 1987 to ease tensions with China over a case described as very silly. Shi's French lover was freed that August.

Which director, better known for body-horror films, made the 1993 screen version of M. Butterfly for Warner Bros.?

David Cronenberg read the screenplay before he had ever seen the play. He invented the film's police-van scene because he doubted the stage ending would work on screen.

Which director, the first woman to win a Tony for directing a musical, staged the 2017 revival of M. Butterfly?

Julie Taymor, who won that Tony for The Lion King, worked with Hwang on a revised text. The new version drew on details of the real spy case that had emerged since 1988.

Which English film star played Rene Gallimard in the 2017 Broadway revival of M. Butterfly at the Cort Theatre?

Clive Owen starred opposite Jin Ha, who came to the part of Song after appearing in the Chicago company of Hamilton.

In which city did M. Butterfly have its world premiere in February 1988, weeks before it reached Broadway?

Washington saw it first, at the National Theatre on February 10, 1988. The Broadway opening at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre followed on March 20.

At which California university did M. Butterfly author David Henry Hwang write his first play, FOB, as a student?

Stanford is where he wrote FOB and directed its first performance while still an undergraduate. Off-Broadway, it won an Obie as best new American play.

After M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang became a frequent opera librettist for which American composer?

Philip Glass and Hwang made the science-fiction music drama 1000 Airplanes on the Roof in 1988, then The Voyage for the Metropolitan Opera in 1992.

An opera version of M. Butterfly, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang, premiered in 2022 in which American city?

Santa Fe staged it two years late because of the pandemic, with music by Huang Ruo. The city's opera company had opened in 1957 with Madama Butterfly.

Which British director, who had staged the first production of Equus, won a Tony for directing M. Butterfly?

John Dexter had already won the directing Tony for Equus in 1975. A Broadway staging of The Threepenny Opera with Sting in 1989 was the final show he directed.

Which entertainment mogul co-produced M. Butterfly on Broadway and later oversaw the film through his own company?

David Geffen kept the screen rights and made the film with Warner Bros. He first wanted Peter Weir to direct, but Weir turned it down.

The 1993 film of M. Butterfly premiered as the opening gala of which city's international film festival?

Toronto opened its 1993 festival with it, five years after opening with Dead Ringers. Both films came from a director born in the city.

Which future Oscar winner played Rene Gallimard in the West End production of M. Butterfly in 1989?

Anthony Hopkins later described the London run as a torment. Soon afterwards he won the Best Actor Oscar as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.