Much of the background research for this production relied on the digital collections of archives in Europe, where historical documents related to the operas attended by King Rama V can be located. 

Primarily, the details of these operas can already be found in King Rama V’s travel journal, “Far From Home” (ไทย: พระราชนิพนธ์ไกลบ้าน), albeit with varying degrees of clarity. Except for Madama Butterfly which seemed to have caught His Majesty’s interest to the extent that the description of the staging and acting, along with the complete synopsis of the story is provided in depth, the description of six other operas is fragmentary.

However, because the journal took the form of letters posted from Europe to Princess Nibha Nobhadol in Bangkok, with dates and places still intact when they were published as a book, it is possible to compare each letter with press coverages and show calendars in newspapers of corresponding dates or weeks, where further accounts of each particular performance attended by King Rama V are provided in great depth. These newspapers include for example, the French daily newspaper, Le Figaro, and the Italian Florence-based newspaper, La Nazione.  

Further exploration in the collection of Bibliotheque Nationale de France (bnf) has also yielded relevant visual materials, such as the set designs for Massenet’s Ariane, the same production seen by His Majesty at Palais Garnier on 16 August 1907, and the costume designs for Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly, seen on 25 September 1907.