Samuel Hall (L) as Pinkerton, and Zoya Gramagin as Cio-Cio San in the St. Petersburg Opera Company's production of Puccini's 'Madama Butterfly," opening June 21 at the Palladium Theater. Credit: Photo by Jim Swallow/Packinghouse Gallery

Samuel Hall (L) as Pinkerton, and Zoya Gramagin as Cio-Cio San in the St. Petersburg Opera Company’s production of Puccini’s ‘Madama Butterfly,” opening June 21 at the Palladium Theater. Credit: Photo by Jim Swallow/Packinghouse Gallery

Weezer fans: you really deserve to experience the inspiration behind the band’s 1996 album Pinkerton. The St. Petersburg Opera gives you a chance when it stages five performances of Puccinni’s most powerful work, Madama Butterfly, which traces the tragedy of the frail, but ready-to-fight, 15-year-old geisha Cio-Cio San (played by Zoya Gramagin) who betrays her family and religion all because of the belief in a life with American naval officer Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton (Samuel Hall).

There is definitely that underlying story about how foreign fighters often abuse the culture’s they invade, but the whole of the production will probably leave you pretty weepy. It opens on Friday and closes on June 30.

St. Pete Opera: Madama Butterfly. Opens Fri., June 21. Hough Hall at Palladium Theater, St. Petersburg. stpeteopera.org.

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This article appears in Jun 13-20, 2019.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...