The story of the famous opera “Madame Butterfly” started in Spray Beach on Long Beach Island, where long-time summer resident John Luther Long, a Philadelphia lawyer, took a story told to him by his missionary sister and turned it into a heartbreaking short story that appeared in the January 1898 issue of The Century Magazine. The reaction to the story was explained by opera historian Chadwick Jenkins.
“Long’s story was widely popular with a public fascinated by the exotic.
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