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
Gabriel Bacquier School and in 1945 entered the Paris Conservatoire, graduating in 1950. He joined the opera company of José Beckmans from 1950 to 1952, and then became a member of La Monnaie in Brussels from 1953 until 1956. There he sang both the French repertory, opera (Faust, Lakmé, Manon, Werther) and operetta ("Angélique", "La belle Hélène", "Les Cloches de Corneville", "Miss Heylett", "Monsieur Beaucaire"); as well as Puccini ("La Boheme", "Madame Butterfly"), the "Barber of Seville" and the "Bartered Bride". He made his debut at the Opéra-Comique in 1956, as Sharpless in "Madama Butterfly", and at the Palais Garnier in 1958,