Miss Saigon Miss Saigon Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly", and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover. The setting of the plot is relocated to 1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War, and "Madame Butterfly"'s story of marriage between an American lieutenant and a geisha is replaced by a romance between a United States Marine and a South Vietnamese bargirl. The musical was premièred at the Theatre Royal, Drury
Miss Helyett (opera) "The Era" found the music "light and pretty, though not as lively as might be desired", and thought the plot flimsy but told in humorous style. "The Monthly Musical Record" reported that the piece "flows smoothly and simply but without any great originality". Reviewing the English version, "The Standard" commented that the original French piece was "one of the most gratuitously coarse and offensive plays ever presented" and that Burnand's bowdlerisation of the crux of the plot had produced a piece "equally inoffensive and meaningless"; there was praise for the score: "some extremely bright and pretty music". Miss Helyett (opera)