Shi Pei Pu, the Chinese opera soprano whose turbulent affair with a (clueless) French diplomat touched on everything from clandestine adoptions of Muslim minority orphans to intercontinental espionage and later inspired the Tony Award winning play M. Butterfly, died in Paris on 30 June, aged 70.

Shi was working as a librettist and soprano for the Beijing Opera and taught Chinese to diplomats’ families when he met 20-year old French embassy clerk Bernard Boursicot in 1964.

When they begun their affair Shi concealed his gender, telling Boursicot that he was an actress forced to play the role of a man by Beijing Opera officials, who didn’t want anyone to discover they had employed a woman. Boursciot’s sexual experience was minimal, and the sexual encounters they shared were “furtive, and always in the dark”, and Boursicot would later claim that his first knowledge of Shi’s actual gender was when all was revealed in their 1980s courtroom appearances in Paris.

Boursicot, who is 64 and is recovering from a stroke, showed no sadness when he learnt of Shi’s death. He said: “He did so many things against me that he had no pity for, I think it is stupid to play another game now and say I am sad. The plate is clean now. I am free.” He said they last spoke a few months ago and Shi told him he still loved him.

After Boursicot left China and stayed away for some years, Shi claimed to have given birth in his absence, to their child. The child, a boy named Shi Du Du, was a Muslim minority Uighur sold by his mother to Shi. Boursicot returned to China in the late 1960s, where he was posted to Mongolia and started working for the Chinese as a spy after local authorities discovered the affair and threatened severe penalties. Shi acted as the intermediary, passing documents from Boursicot to Chinese agents.

In 1982, after he’d returned from China, Boursciot arranged for Shi and their son to emigrate on diplomatic visas. Shi and son (renamed Bertrand) lived with Boursciot and his new male lover, Thierry Toulet. French counterespionage authorities began investigating the unusual arrangement and in 1983 Shi and Boursicot were arrested on spying charges.

In 1986 they were convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. In testimony, Shi described how for years he had kept Boursicot literally in the dark in large part by having sex rarely, quickly and with the lights off. A laughing stock in France, Boursciot had slashed his own throat with a razor in prison after learning for the first time  that Shi was actually male.

Orientalist to the last, Boursicot said he felt betrayed and that he’d always attributed Shi’s bedroom modesty to Chinese tradition. Shi testified that he had never explicitly told Boursicot he had been female but never corrected the assumption either, a claim rejected by Boursicot.French President Francois Mitterand pardoned Shi in 1987, after 11 months in prison.

After his release, Shi remained in Paris singing in minor opera productions. He is survived by his son and three grandchildren.

The Broadway production M. Butterfly was written by David Henry Hwang and was the 1988 Tony Award winner for best play. It re-creates the romantic tribulations of Shi and Boursicot. John Lithgow (and later Anthony Hopkins) portrayed a fictionalized Boursicot on stage, with actor B.D. Wong (Ian McKellen’s lover in And The Band Played On) in the Shi role. Both actors won Tony Awards for their performances, which they recreated on Tony night in this clip:

The 1993 film, directed by David Cronenberg, starred Jeremy Irons and John Lone: