In 1986, playwright David Henry Hwang heard the story of Bernard Boursicot, a French diplomat convicted of espionage, who believed that his lover Shi Pei Pu (a Peking Opera singer) was a woman. Hwang was fascinated: How could someone not know their lover’s gender? As Hwang stated in his afterward to M. Butterfly: “I therefore concluded that the diplomat must have fallen in love not with a person, but with a fantasy stereotype.”
Using this fantasy stereotype layered with Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, Hwang created the story of Rene Gallimard, a French diplomat, and Song Liling, his lover.
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M. Butterfly guide sections
