IN A PAPER HOUSE WITH A RED door and a yellow rug, Madame Butterfly is weeping. Her husband, the feckless Lieutenant Pinkerton, has failed to return after years at sea, and now she realizes that he has abandoned her. Overcome by shame, she vows to kill herself.
This scene marks the climax of Puccini's operatic masterpiece Madame Butterfly, and, on a hot summer day as Baltimore artist Morgan Monceaux struggled to translate his vision of it into paint, the opera's sonorous harmonies and plangent melodies resounded through the rooms of his sweltering West Baltimore rowhouse.
