Author(s)

Beibei Li

Corresponding Author

Beibei Li

ABSTRACT

The national opera Canal Ballad tells a touching love story with the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal created by the working people in ancient China as the background. Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly describes a humiliated oriental woman who fell in love with a fickle western man without complaint or regret, waited for him faithfully for three years, and finally was ruthlessly abandoned and committed suicide in despair. Through the basic music materials expressed in the operas Madame Butterfly and Canal Ballad, this paper has a preliminary understanding of the author's creative ideas. With women as the leading role, strong exotic sentiment, strong love, perfect combination of drama and lyricism, this paper compares and analyzes the use of oriental elements in these two works from the perspective of music, and discusses the unique charm of opera.

KEYWORDS

Female music image, Madame butterfly, Canal ballad