M. Butterfly

In Mao’s China, French diplomat René Gallimard falls under the spell of a captivating Peking opera singer named Song Liling. Gallimard begins to fantasize that he is Pinkerton, the American lieutenant from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, projecting his Orientalist fantasies of submissive Asian women onto the singer. The two begin a passionate affair that lasts twenty years, until they are arrested. In court, it is revealed that Song was not only a man in drag, but also a Chinese spy who passed on information about the war in Vietnam. The opera turns gender conventions and cultural power relations upside down