At the conclusion of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, the love child of Cio-Cio and Pinkerton is whisked away to America by his father, Captain BF Pinkerton and his father's American wife, Kate, even as his Japanese mother, Cio-Cio, lies dying from a self-inflicted wound.
Now, in the new, original musical drama Tom Pinkerton: The Ballad of Butterfly's Son by David MacIntyre and Hiro Kanagawa, a dramatic and compelling new story emerges about the boy that is set twenty years after that fateful day. Tom Pinkerton is an opera/musical theatre hybrid that follows the boy, now called Tom, as he returns to Japan in search of the mother he hardly knew.
Three selections from Tom Pinkerton are offered:
1.The Prologue: Mukashi-mukashi (long, long ago) The introduction of our story sung by the whole company at the top of the show;
2. One Fine Day sung by Kate Pinkerton to Tom early in Scene 2 after he implores her to tell him anything of his mother that she can remember. Of course, she loves Tom and doesn't wish to tell him the terrible news that his mother committed suicide because of his father's betrayal. Instead, Kate sings of the day that she arrived to take Tom to America and how Cio-Cio responded that "no woman 'neath the arches of heaven is happier than I" - but knowing in her heart that Cio-Cio was overwhelmed with sorrow at losing both her son and her husband.
3. Goodbye Cio-Cio sung by Tom Pinkerton near the conclusion of the show after he has met Suzuki, Cio-Cio's former maid, who tells Tom the true story of how his mother died. Filled with remorse, Tom says goodbye to his Japanese mother and the old world Japan that died with her.