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
Madame Aphrodite (musical) (1958) and "Parade" (1960). In his memoirs, Herman recalls being brought into the project through his agent, Priscilla Morgan, who often held musical evenings for her clients. At one such event, Herman met Tad Mosel and, after being shown the script for "Madame Aphrodite", admitted "I was fascinated because it was so different from the kind of thing that I had been doing". When news of the musical version of "Madame Aphrodite" was announced towards the end of 1960, it was asserted that "from the way the talk went the other day, it should be along before Winter's end". By