Take in the obsession of the East with the West through an interpretation of Puccini’s tragic opera Madame Butterfly, arranged for Singapore’s only harmonica orchestra, performing with featured soloists such as Mr Yasuo Watani and a humming choir.

Madame Butterfly tells of the forbidden love between Butterfly, a Japanese geisha and Lieutenant Pinkerton, an American soldier: an obsessive love that breached social and cultural boundaries. Yet in today’s ever shifting multicultural Asian populations, ethnicity, for more and more of its denizens, has become a cultural mosaic of East meets West. How then should we look at our traditions and heritage now and in the future? Will the story of Madame Butterfly continue to be tragic or ironic?

On the lighter side, NUS Harmonica Orchestra will also perform Strauss’ Voices of Spring and Bernstein’s West Side Story.