About the work
One-act opera by Japanese composer Ikuma Dan after the eponymous 1949 play by Junji Kinoshita, itself based on a Japanese crane-wife legend. Dan had first written incidental music for Kinoshita's play and then persuaded the author to release the text almost unchanged as an opera libretto; the premiere took place on 30 January 1952 at Asahi Hall in Osaka, with a revised version following at the 1957 Zurich Music Festival.
Plot
The crane-woman Tsu takes human form and marries the poor fisherman Yohyo, who does not know her true nature. When Yohyo, pressed by greedy villagers, asks her for fine cloth woven from her own feathers, her secret is exposed and Tsu must leave him forever.
Cultural significance
"Yūzuru" has been among the most frequently performed works of the Japanese opera repertoire since 1952, with nearly 1,000 performances to date. It is among the first works to combine traditional Japanese narrative material with through-composed Western operatic technique and is regarded as a milestone of Japanese opera history.