Madama Butterfly his nest." Suzuki begins quietly to weep. 17. "Un bel dì vedremo" ("One fine day we shall see"). In this, the opera's most famous aria (and one of the most popular works in the soprano repertoire), Butterfly says that, "one fine day", they will see a puff of smoke on the far horizon. Then a ship will appear and enter the harbor. She will not go down to meet him but will wait on the hill for him to come. After a long time, she will see in the far distance a man beginning the walk out of the city
Giacomo Puccini critics as to the artistic value of his work has always been divided. Grove Music Online described Puccini's strengths as a composer as follows: Puccini succeeded in mastering the orchestra as no other Italian had done before him, creating new forms by manipulating structures inherited from the great Italian tradition, loading them with bold harmonic progressions which had little or nothing to do with what was happening then in Italy, though they were in step with the work of French, Austrian and German colleagues. In his work on Puccini, Julian Budden describes Puccini as a gifted and original composer, noting