When Puccini's Madama Butterfly opened at La Scala, Milan, in 1904, it was greeted with boos, jeers and howls of derision.

But just three months later at Bresca it was a huge triumph and so it has remained ever since, never dropping out of the operatic top ten and being produced by virtually every opera house in the world.

The reason for this success is easy, it tells a very simple story and Puccini gave it the royal treatment with some of the most ravishing music of his career.

For me it contains his most alluring music, better by far than La Boheme. It may not have the nobility of Tosca, but it is humane and emotionally-charged.

The tale is of an American naval lieutenant, Pinkerton, who is posted to Nagasaki in Japan and decides to rent a house and a bride while he is away from home.

The bride, Butterfly, falls in love with Pinkerton. When he goes home on leave he abandons her and the child she has borne him, only to return to claim the child as his own. Butterfly contemplates a life of dishonour.

"Oversexed, overpaid and over here" was how American troops were seen in England during the Second World War. But they were the same in 19th-Century Japan, in early 20th-Century Philippines and in Korea and Vietnam. They are probably acting in the same way in Iraq today.

At the Theatre Royal this week, Butterfly is being given a stunning reading by the Ukranian National Opera of Odessa in a strictly traditional, but highly colourful, production by Ellen Kent of Opera And Ballet International.

Her Butterfly is Rosa Lee Thomas, a Korean-American soprano who is a superb singer who really lives the part.

Her pleasure in love is our pleasure, her agony is our agony and both emotions are written on her face and in her every gesture.

If her singing is glorious, that of Ahmed Agadi as Pinkerton is equally fabulous. He combines his excellent tenor voice with film star good looks and it comes as no surprise when Butterfly falls for him, probably along with most women in the audience.

Butterfly continues tonight and on Saturday afternoon and evening. Tomorrow afternoon and evening (Thursday), and on Friday night the company is presenting Verdi's La Traviata.