Weezer's 'Pinkerton' via Giacomo Puccini's 'Madama Butterfly,' Two Decades Later

20 years ago today, American rock band Weezer released their theatrical magnum opus, Pinkerton. By channeling pre-millennial pain and rockstar disillusionment through Puccini's prolific opera Madama Butterfly, the Los Angeles quartet delivered their most heartfelt and influential album.

Reeling from the unexpected success of their 1994 debut, frontman and songwriter Rivers Cuomo retreated from the spotlight and enrolled at Harvard University. The members of Weezer would meet on his semester breaks, in LA, New York or Boston, to record their sophomore album, tentatively envisioned as a rock opera called Songs from the Black Hole.

A fan letter from a young Japanese girl radically altered the scope of the in-progress work. Cuomo composed "Across the Sea," the album's fifth song and emotional crux, in ode to the seemingly sentimental correspondence. Cuomo later spoke of the message's emotional significance:

"When I got the letter, I fell in love with her. It was such a great letter. I was very lonely at the time, but at the same time I was very depressed that I would never meet her. Even if I did see her, she was probably some fourteen-year-old girl who didn't speak English."

Abandoning the space odyssey notion of Black Hole, the album's elements turned to a romantic, Japanese aesthetic. Studying musical composition at Harvard, this dovetailed with Cuomo's academic pursuit of classical music. The musician paralleled his experiences at Harvard with that of character Lt. B. F. Pinkerton from Puccini's Madama Butterfly, giving the album its name.

Cuomo recalled Puccini's influence on Pinkerton in a recent Rolling Stone retrospective:

"I was listening to a lot of Puccini from the end of 1994, and I got more and more into it. I really felt like this is a guy who shared the same musical values as me and maybe some of the same abilities, although he's on a whole other level. I felt like maybe I could have been him in a previous life."

Pinkerton was released on Sept. 24, 1996.

TagsWeezer, Giacomo Puccini, Madama Butterfly