Arthur Groos is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities (emeritus) at Cornell University and former Associate Director of the Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini (Lucca). A founding editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal and Cambridge Studies in Opera, his books include Giacomo Puccini: La bohème (1986), Reading Opera (1988), Madama Butterfly: Fonti e documenti (2005), and Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (2011).
'This timely and exceptional study of Madama Butterfly provides a valuable, well-documented and illuminating account of the origins of the work and aspects of its reception in Japan. It is a meticulous exploration of the significance of this tragedia giapponese that will make a lasting contribution to Puccini studies.' Naomi Matsumoto, Goldsmiths, University of London 'This truly goundbreaking book sheds new and fascinating light not only on the conception and composition of Puccini's _Madama Butterfly_, but also on the Japanese origins of Madame Butterfly's story and the Japanese reception of the opera, which saw its notorious orientalism questioned and subverted through ingenious adaptation and creative re-appropriation. Groos makes us listen differently to a work we thought we knew all too well.' Emanuele Senici, University of Rome La Sapienza