Description

Musiclologist W. Anthony Sheppard tells about the astonishing and completely accidental discovery he made on a trip to see the Guinness Collection of Mechanical Instruments and Automata at the Morris Museum, in Morristown, NJ. Sheppard published his initial findings in the New York Times in an article called “Music Box as Muse to Puccini’s ‘Butterfly’.” He discovered tunes Puccini used in the Japanese-set opera Madama Butterfly on a Chinese music box. And, it may very well be the very same music box Puccini heard.