Puccini is a master of modulations. He employs large, full harmonies, soul-asserting, all-engulfing chords, that feel their way from one key to another, and burst forth in new glory with every transition. This persistent progress through varying keys has an effect of leading the listener through different rooms in some palatial edifice. In the hands of a great composer, each key of the scale unlocks a new vista in the enchanted palace of music.
Behind a screen on the veranda, Butterfly changes her chromatic kimona to one of white silk. She emerges with garments all soft and fluttering, like the trembling white wings of a night-moth.
Pinkerton leads her into the garden, and there, under the spell of the silent stars, they sing of love and of the glorious mystic night, with its gentle breeze that passes like a benediction over the bending lilacs. Fire-flies (cleverly imitated) hover in the air and flicker faintly, like candles in a distant chancel. The conductor waving his wand, like a priest the swinging censor, evokes a wreathing mist of music that enwraps the lovers in a drapery of dreams.
Melodies and harmonies rise into being and pass away like phantoms floating by, until at last the great love-theme of the opera once again is flashed upon us. The diamond, scarce revealed before, is now in its proper setting. It is displayed in solemn glory by the dignitary at the desk, who, with upraised, swaying hands, holds aloft this precious theme, as a priest does the sacred emblem.
Act II. pictures the interior of Butterfly's house.
There is desolation in the home; the orchestra tells us this, for the tragic theme possesses the instruments, creeping around among them, serpent-like, and enfolding them in its coils.
The rising curtain reveals Susuki kneeling before a shrine; she is praying that Pinkerton may return.
Three times have the dragon-kites swelled in the breeze and the peach trees flushed into bloom since the day he sailed away.
Her prayer abounds in strange and uncouth harmonies that wail themselves into silence. When the incantation is finished, an orchestral phrase of keen despair and tortured hope accompanies Butterfly as she asks: "How soon shall we be starving?"
Susuki counts over the few remaining yen, and expresses doubt about Pinkerton's return. Again that same theme of anguish pierces the air like a knife as Butterfly shrieks out: "Silence!" She will not listen to doubt. She insists that he will return, and she fondly adds, "he will call me again his tiny child-wife, his little Butterfly!"