The scene is laid in Nagasaki in our own time.
The first act takes place on a hill, from which there is a grand view of the ocean and of the town below.
Goro ("Nakodo"=matchmaker) shows his new Japanese house to an American lieutenant, Linkerton, who has purchased it in Japanese fashion for 999 years, with the right of giving monthly notice.—He is waiting for his bride Cho-Cho-San, named Butterfly, whom he is about to wed under the same queer conditions for one hundred yens (a yen about four shillings).
Butterfly's maid Suzuki and his two servants are presented to him, but he is impatient to embrace his sweetheart, with whom he is very much in love.
Sharpless, the American Consul, who tells him much good of the little bride, warns him, not to bruise the wings of the delicate butterfly, but Linkerton only laughs at his remonstrances.
At last Butterfly appears with her companions. At her bidding, they all shut their umbrellas and kneel to their friend's future husband, of whom the girl is very proud.
Questioned by the Consul about her family, she tells him, that they are of good origin, but that, her father having died, she had to support herself and her mother as Geisha. She is but fifteen and very sweet and tender hearted.—
When the procession of her relations come up, they all do obeisance to Linkerton. They are all jealous of Butterfly's good luck and prophesy an evil end, but the girl perfectly trusts and believes in her lover and even confides to him, that she has left her own gods, to pray henceforth to the God of her husband.
When the latter begins to show her their house, she produces from her sleeve her few precious belongings; these are some silken scarfs, a little brooch, a looking glass and a fan; also a long knife, which she at once hides in a corner of the house. Goro tells Linkerton, that it is the weapon, with which her father performed "Harakiri" (killed himself). The last things she shows her lover are some little figures, "the Ottoken", which represent the souls of her ancestors.—