On this day in 1904 Puccini’s Madama Butterfly had its disastrous premiere in Milan.

As Ricordi described it in the March edition of Musice e Musicisti:

Growls, shouts, groans, laughter, giggling, the usual single cries of “bis,” designed to excite the public still more; that sums up the reception which the public of La Scala accorded the new work by Maestro Giacomo Puccini . . . The spectacle given in the auditorium seemed as well organized as that on the stage since it began precisely with the beginning of the opera.

Three years later at the Metropolitan Opera . . .