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
Manon Lescaut (Puccini) libretto. So confused was the authorship of the libretto that no one was credited on the title page of the original score. However, it was Illica and Giacosa who completed the libretto and went on to contribute the libretti to Puccini's next three – and most successful – works, "La Bohème", "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly". Puccini took some musical elements in "Manon Lescaut" from earlier works he had written. For example, the madrigal "Sulla vetta tu del monte" from act 2 echoes the "Agnus Dei" from his 1880 "Messa a quattro voci". Other elements of "Manon Lescaut" come from his