Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) - Madama Butterfly Opera . Act 1 *Click to activate the English subtitles for the synopsis* (00:00-03:31) 00:00 E soffitto .. E Pareti 02:14 Questa è la cameriera 04:10 Che Guardi .. Se Non Giunge Ancor La Sposa 06:51 Dovunque al mondo 10:58 Quale smania vi prende 14:40 Ecco! Son Giunte Al Sommo Del Pendio 18:47 Gran ventura 22:35 L’imperial commissario 22:57 Vieni, amor mio 28:44 Leri son salita tutta sola 30:31 Tutti Zitti! .. E Concesso Al Nominato 33:25 Ed eccoci in famiglia 37:04 Bimba dagli occhi pieni di malia 39:12 Viene La Sera 41:03 Quest'Obi Pomposa 43:00 Bimba Dagli Occhi Pieni Di Malia 46:46 Vogliatemi Bene, Un Bene Piccolino 49:51 Vini, Vieni .. Via Dall'Anima In Pena Act 2 *Click to activate the English subtitles for the synopsis* (54:45-57:10) 54:45 E inzaghi ed izanami 57:21 Suzuki .. E Lungi La Miseria 1:01:52 Un bel di vedremo 1:06:28 C’è entrate 1:10:14 Ah Sì. Goro, Appena B. F. Pinkerton Fu In Mare 1:12:56 Si Sa Che Aprir La Porta 1:16:00 Ora a noi 1:19:00 Qui Troncarla Conviene 1:21:59 E questo ? E questo ? 1:24:15 Che tua madre dovrà 1:27:13 Lo scendo al piano 1:28:50 Vespra ! Rospo maledetto 1:30:35 Una nave da guerra 1:33:01 Scuoti quella fronda di ciliegio 1:38:07 Or vienmi ad adornar 1:43:43 Coro a bocca chiusa (Humming Chorus) 1:47:12 Introduzione 1:55:00 Già il sole 1:57:16 Chi Sia .. Zitta! Zitta! 1:59:50 Lo so che alle sue pene 2:03:42 Addio, fiorito asil 2:05:38 Galileo dirai ? 2:08:41 Tu, Suzuki, Che Sei Tanto Buona 2:13:17 Come una mosca prigioniera 2:16:23 Con onor muore Madama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) : Renata Scotto Suzuki : Anna di Stasio Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton : Carlo Bergonzi Kate Pinkerton : Silvana Padoan Sharpless : Rolando Panerai Goro : Piero de Palma Il Principe Yamadori : Giuseppe Morresi Il Bonzo : Paolo Montarsolo Il Commissario Imperiale : Mario Rinaudo Coro e Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma Conductor : Sir John Barbirolli Recorded in 1966, at Roma New mastering in 2021 by AB for CMRR Find CMRR's recordings on *Spotify* : spoti.fi/3016eVr The present recording was made in the Rome Opera House in August 1966. Astonishingly, it was the 67-year-old Sir John Barbirolli's first major opera recording. Both his father and grandfather had been members of the orchestra at La Scala, Milan, and Barbirolli himself had begun his conducting career in opera (Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Verdi's Aida, and Madama Butterfly on tour with the British National Opera Company in 1926). "What Mr Barbirolli will do with other masters remains to be proved," wrote Samuel Langford, grandest of contemporary critics, in the Manchester Guardian. "In Puccini at least he is an absolute master. " Barbirolli went on to conduct memorable performances of Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden, but orchestral appointments in New York and with the Hallé in Manchester turned his career away from the theatre.
For Barbirolli, the 1966 Butterfly was thus a double homecoming: to opera and to Italy. The Rome players, who weeks earlier during a recording of L'elisir d'amore had played as badly as it is possible to play and still get away with it, responded with respect and affection to Barbirolli's heady mix of no-nonsense discipline, Italianate passion, and a sharp-eyed reading of Puccini's score. Their manager observed: "What impressed me was the beauty of the sound when the orchestra was playing and the silence when it was not!" Barbirolli was given a superb cast: Renata Scotto, the finest Butterfly of her generation, the unfailingly stylish Carlo Bergonzi, whose unavailability had caused Barbirolli to turn down an earlier offer to record Aida, and Rolando Panerai in the crucial role of Sharpless, the only person in the drama who truly understands both Butterfly and Pinkerton. A late replacement for Peter Glossop, Panerai was paid a hefty flat fee for his part in the recording, and rightly so. In terms of musical characterisation, there is none finer on record. Scotto was 19 when she sang her first Butterfly, in Savona in 1953. It was a role she took to instinctively, as the distinguished pre-war soprano Mafalda Favero instantly recognised. Favero taught Scotto how to sing dramatic lines without forcing the voice, but she also issued a warning quarried from personal experience: "Be careful. The role is a killer. Remember that you have to know your strength and that you can't waste any of it because you will need it all to say farewell to your life and your child in the last act." Further pointers came from Maria Callas, who recorded the role for EMI with Karajan in 1955: an intimate and revealing portrait specifically created for the microphone. Where Callas and Karajan conjured forth a Butterfly who links Wagner's Isolde to Debussy's Mélisande, Scotto was determined to create a real theatre reading, which would combine intimacy and power. As Scotto argues in her autobiography, More than a Diva (New York, 1984), Butterfly is a woman not a child. By the age of 15, she has already experienced poverty, shame, the death of her father and such sexual experience as the role of a geisha demanded. Critics seeking a bel canto Butterfly have occasionally expressed reservations about Scotto. Writing in the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera (London, 1993), London Green countered: Hers is a splendid voice for Butterfly: lyric, full, mobile and forward, with an inimitable flavour and an ability to penetrate the orchestra by means of colour and focus. The lower voice is uniquely shadowed without being dark, the very top is a little wiry, and it all retains a distinctive quality which suggests the Oriental. The genius of the reading lies in the detailing. At the heart of the performance is the letter-reading scene and Butterfly's revelation that she has a son by Pinkerton. At first, Scotto is the excitable child, but the remark in Pinkerton's letter "perhaps Butterfly does not remember me" draws from her a response which in Scotto's enunciation marries barely suppressed amusement with anger, pain and incredulity. When Sharpless advises her to accept Yamadori's offer of marriage, her uttering of the word "Voi?"("You?") is alone worth the price of the recording. Scotto takes the death scene to new heights, holding the ritual and individual elements in an ideal balance, The phrase "muore Butterfly", in which she tells her child that she is about to die, is marked to be sung "with a weeping voice" but, as Scotto has pointed out, no singer can actually afford to weep. Her shaping and timing of the phrase (incomparably supported by Barbirolli) is deeply touching, but it is almost immediately surpassed by her even more affecting enunciation of what is arguably the most heart-rending phrase in the entire opera: "Il materno abbandono". When Barbirolli returned to London after the sessions (finished with a minute to spare after a violent thunderstorm delayed the recording of the "Flower Duet"), he told an interviewer: "My appetite for opera has been re-whetted". Listen to the orchestral aftermath of the moment when Butterfly produces the child in the scene with Sharpless and you will hear the evidence. This is conducting "from the heart to the heart", fierce yet noble, spontaneous-seeming yet superbly judged. That, his rubato-laden but inch-perfect accompaniment of Scotto's uniquely detailed performance of the title role, helps make this Butterfly the unforgettable recording it undoubtedly is. Giacomo Puccini & Vincenzo Bellini PLAYLIST (reference recordings) : ruclips.net/video/mk0S8LGa4TE/видео.html
Yes, thank you for the wonderful information about this recording. It adds to an already amazing experience. Scotto will always be my favorite Butterfly!
It's impossible to over listen to this masterpiece. I do, indeed come back to this recording again and again. Renata is magnificent here, she brings tears to my eyes at the end of Act 1's love scene. Carlo is at peak performance, with the best tonal control one could demand. The rest of the cast sublimely delivers what Sir Barbirolli expects of them, and the orchestra, as well, the first violin cries. It's so beautiful. I'm so very grateful to you, CM/RR, for sharing this magnum opus - it's stunning from the beginning to the sublime, beyond description ending. /:-)
The present recording was made in the Rome Opera House in August 1966. Astonishingly, it was the 67-year-old Sir John Barbirolli's first major opera recording. Both his father and grandfather had been members of the orchestra at La Scala, Milan, and Barbirolli himself had begun his conducting career in opera (Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Verdi's Aida, and Madama Butterfly on tour with the British National Opera Company in 1926). "What Mr Barbirolli will do with other masters remains to be proved," wrote Samuel Langford, grandest of contemporary critics, in the Manchester Guardian. "In Puccini at least he is an absolute master. " Barbirolli went on to conduct memorable performances of Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden, but orchestral appointments in New York and with the Hallé in Manchester turned his career away from the theatre.
For Barbirolli, the 1966 Butterfly was thus a double homecoming: to opera and to Italy. The Rome players, who weeks earlier during a recording of L'elisir d'amore had played as badly as it is possible to play and still get away with it, responded with respect and affection to Barbirolli's heady mix of no-nonsense discipline, Italianate passion, and a sharp-eyed reading of Puccini's score. Their manager observed: "What impressed me was the beauty of the sound when the orchestra was playing and the silence when it was not!" Barbirolli was given a superb cast: Renata Scotto, the finest Butterfly of her generation, the unfailingly stylish Carlo Bergonzi, whose unavailability had caused Barbirolli to turn down an earlier offer to record Aida, and Rolando Panerai in the crucial role of Sharpless, the only person in the drama who truly understands both Butterfly and Pinkerton. A late replacement for Peter Glossop, Panerai was paid a hefty flat fee for his part in the recording, and rightly so. In terms of musical characterisation, there is none finer on record. Scotto was 19 when she sang her first Butterfly, in Savona in 1953. It was a role she took to instinctively, as the distinguished pre-war soprano Mafalda Favero instantly recognised. Favero taught Scotto how to sing dramatic lines without forcing the voice, but she also issued a warning quarried from personal experience: "Be careful. The role is a killer. Remember that you have to know your strength and that you can't waste any of it because you will need it all to say farewell to your life and your child in the last act." Further pointers came from Maria Callas, who recorded the role for EMI with Karajan in 1955: an intimate and revealing portrait specifically created for the microphone. Where Callas and Karajan conjured forth a Butterfly who links Wagner's Isolde to Debussy's Mélisande, Scotto was determined to create a real theatre reading, which would combine intimacy and power. As Scotto argues in her autobiography, More than a Diva (New York, 1984), Butterfly is a woman not a child. By the age of 15, she has already experienced poverty, shame, the death of her father and such sexual experience as the role of a geisha demanded. Critics seeking a bel canto Butterfly have occasionally expressed reservations about Scotto. Writing in the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera (London, 1993), London Green countered: Hers is a splendid voice for Butterfly: lyric, full, mobile and forward, with an inimitable flavour and an ability to penetrate the orchestra by means of colour and focus. The lower voice is uniquely shadowed without being dark, the very top is a little wiry, and it all retains a distinctive quality which suggests the Oriental. The genius of the reading lies in the detailing. At the heart of the performance is the letter-reading scene and Butterfly's revelation that she has a son by Pinkerton. At first, Scotto is the excitable child, but the remark in Pinkerton's letter "perhaps Butterfly does not remember me" draws from her a response which in Scotto's enunciation marries barely suppressed amusement with anger, pain and incredulity. When Sharpless advises her to accept Yamadori's offer of marriage, her uttering of the word "Voi?"("You?") is alone worth the price of the recording. Scotto takes the death scene to new heights, holding the ritual and individual elements in an ideal balance, The phrase "muore Butterfly", in which she tells her child that she is about to die, is marked to be sung "with a weeping voice" but, as Scotto has pointed out, no singer can actually afford to weep. Her shaping and timing of the phrase (incomparably supported by Barbirolli) is deeply touching, but it is almost immediately surpassed by her even more affecting enunciation of what is arguably the most heart-rending phrase in the entire opera: "Il materno abbandono". When Barbirolli returned to London after the sessions (finished with a minute to spare after a violent thunderstorm delayed the recording of the "Flower Duet"), he told an interviewer: "My appetite for opera has been re-whetted". Listen to the orchestral aftermath of the moment when Butterfly produces the child in the scene with Sharpless and you will hear the evidence. This is conducting "from the heart to the heart", fierce yet noble, spontaneous-seeming yet superbly judged. That, his rubato-laden but inch-perfect accompaniment of Scotto's uniquely detailed performance of the title role, helps make this Butterfly the unforgettable recording it undoubtedly is.
I'm grateful for sharing this wonderful recording. I saw Butterfly on Oct 18 2023 at Detroit Opera House with Karah Son in the leader. I shared this glorious experience with a friend saying that my all time dream is to see Butterly at La Scala. I was surprised when she said that in fact she saw the production at La Scala with Renata Scotto when she was studying art in Italy. Sublime!
I feel so lucky to have found this --- way back in the day, I taped a broadcast of this production from the BBC 💔 The cassette was somehow mislaid...... More recently, I thought of purchasing the recording from a certain Mail Order Firm -- the DVD is, not surprisingly. a collectible with an astronomical price...... So, now I come full circle, & this presentation sounds perfectly fine, even on my phone! So, many thanks for making a little dream come true 💔 From Lockdown Brighton 🌈 UK take care & be well y'all! 🙏🏼🌹🙏🏽
I come back to this after Renata Scotto passed away, but there's more to this recording than one singer. Besides Scotto, Bergonzi and Panerai were also at their considerable best, and it feels like a shame Barbirolli didn't record more operas. One of the all time great opera recordings.
Everything about this performance is so thrillingly individualistic, from the highly specific Butterfly to the idiosyncratic but totally echt conducting of Barbirolli. Bergonzi, like Scotto, is musician and poet. Other recordings may hold other kinds of appeal, but this one is penetrating and overwhelmingly emotional.
To me, Callas will also be La Davinia. But Renatta Scotto will never be surpassed in her Che tu Madre and Con onor and Tu, tu, piccolo Addio. With goosebumps, I weep EVERY TIME.
Gosh, she sounds great! I heard her in Manon Lescaut in Dallas 1981 and thought she sang terrifically well AND acted with pizzazz! I will never understand, tho, how at the end of "un bel di" an operatic master lie Puccini gave the soprano the required dramatic high note but then wrote breaks the long-held high note by having another syllable. Why didn't he write that dramatic note as one sustained tone? (1:05:45-1:05:55)
I just now realized that RIGHT! I'm not familiar with hardly any Barbirolli Opera recordings! Scotto is fine. She was actually a pretty fair actress. Puccini was her strength......though she never had the pureness of tone that Mirella Freni had.
@@detectivefiction3701Not his opera recordings but definitely his recordings of British Composers and his recordings of Mahler. He was the finest British Conductor of Mahler IMO. I was familiar with Renata Scotto from many other performances and recordings over the years.
@xxsaruman82xx87: We’ll I guess she agrees with you because she commits suicide at the end. But if she is overrated at least she has something to show for it unlike you.
I never liked Scotto's cold, shrill, unsteady voice, or Barbirolli's slow, portentous, un-Italianate tempi. The whole thing, though, is very expertly executed.
I really like the quality of this recording, but I can't get over Scotto's annoying voice. Can someone recommend me any other great recording? (I was trying Karajan's but the sound quality is rather off-putting)
@@detectivefiction3701 I would describe it as bleating. Sorry. I'm not sure if it is just her take on a japanese character or if it is her normal voice.
Trying to be as beefy as Tebaldi and as expressive as Callas will ruin your voice - and the ears of the listeners - when nature has equipped you with a leggero voice of limited power and ditto tone colour. Awful.
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) - Madama Butterfly Opera .
Act 1
*Click to activate the English subtitles for the synopsis* (00:00-03:31)
00:00 E soffitto .. E Pareti
02:14 Questa è la cameriera
04:10 Che Guardi .. Se Non Giunge Ancor La Sposa
06:51 Dovunque al mondo
10:58 Quale smania vi prende
14:40 Ecco! Son Giunte Al Sommo Del Pendio
18:47 Gran ventura
22:35 L’imperial commissario
22:57 Vieni, amor mio
28:44 Leri son salita tutta sola
30:31 Tutti Zitti! .. E Concesso Al Nominato
33:25 Ed eccoci in famiglia
37:04 Bimba dagli occhi pieni di malia
39:12 Viene La Sera
41:03 Quest'Obi Pomposa
43:00 Bimba Dagli Occhi Pieni Di Malia
46:46 Vogliatemi Bene, Un Bene Piccolino
49:51 Vini, Vieni .. Via Dall'Anima In Pena
Act 2
*Click to activate the English subtitles for the synopsis* (54:45-57:10)
54:45 E inzaghi ed izanami
57:21 Suzuki .. E Lungi La Miseria
1:01:52 Un bel di vedremo
1:06:28 C’è entrate
1:10:14 Ah Sì. Goro, Appena B. F. Pinkerton Fu In Mare
1:12:56 Si Sa Che Aprir La Porta
1:16:00 Ora a noi
1:19:00 Qui Troncarla Conviene
1:21:59 E questo ? E questo ?
1:24:15 Che tua madre dovrà
1:27:13 Lo scendo al piano
1:28:50 Vespra ! Rospo maledetto
1:30:35 Una nave da guerra
1:33:01 Scuoti quella fronda di ciliegio
1:38:07 Or vienmi ad adornar
1:43:43 Coro a bocca chiusa (Humming Chorus)
1:47:12 Introduzione
1:55:00 Già il sole
1:57:16 Chi Sia .. Zitta! Zitta!
1:59:50 Lo so che alle sue pene
2:03:42 Addio, fiorito asil
2:05:38 Galileo dirai ?
2:08:41 Tu, Suzuki, Che Sei Tanto Buona
2:13:17 Come una mosca prigioniera
2:16:23 Con onor muore
Madama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) : Renata Scotto
Suzuki : Anna di Stasio
Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton : Carlo Bergonzi
Kate Pinkerton : Silvana Padoan
Sharpless : Rolando Panerai
Goro : Piero de Palma
Il Principe Yamadori : Giuseppe Morresi
Il Bonzo : Paolo Montarsolo
Il Commissario Imperiale : Mario Rinaudo
Coro e Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
Conductor : Sir John Barbirolli
Recorded in 1966, at Roma
New mastering in 2021 by AB for CMRR
Find CMRR's recordings on *Spotify* : spoti.fi/3016eVr
The present recording was made in the Rome Opera House in August 1966. Astonishingly, it was the 67-year-old Sir John Barbirolli's first major opera recording. Both his father and grandfather had been members of the orchestra at La Scala, Milan, and Barbirolli himself had begun his conducting career in opera (Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Verdi's Aida, and Madama Butterfly on tour with the British National Opera Company in 1926). "What Mr Barbirolli will do with other masters remains to be proved," wrote Samuel Langford, grandest of contemporary critics, in the Manchester Guardian. "In Puccini at least he is an absolute master. " Barbirolli went on to conduct memorable performances of Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden, but orchestral appointments in New York and with the Hallé in Manchester turned his career away from the theatre.
For Barbirolli, the 1966 Butterfly was thus a double homecoming: to opera and to Italy. The Rome players, who weeks earlier during a recording of L'elisir d'amore had played as badly as it is possible to play and still get away with it, responded with respect and affection to Barbirolli's heady mix of no-nonsense discipline, Italianate passion, and a sharp-eyed reading of Puccini's score. Their manager observed: "What impressed me was the beauty of the sound when the orchestra was playing and the silence when it was not!"
Barbirolli was given a superb cast: Renata Scotto, the finest Butterfly of her generation, the unfailingly stylish Carlo Bergonzi, whose unavailability had caused Barbirolli to turn down an earlier offer to record Aida, and Rolando Panerai in the crucial role of Sharpless, the only person in the drama who truly understands both Butterfly and Pinkerton. A late replacement for Peter Glossop, Panerai was paid a hefty flat fee for his part in the recording, and rightly so. In terms of musical characterisation, there is none finer on record.
Scotto was 19 when she sang her first Butterfly, in Savona in 1953. It was a role she took to instinctively, as the distinguished pre-war soprano Mafalda Favero instantly recognised. Favero taught Scotto how to sing dramatic lines without forcing the voice, but she also issued a warning quarried from personal experience: "Be careful. The role is a killer. Remember that you have to know your strength and that you can't waste any of it because you will need it all to say farewell to your life and your child in the last act."
Further pointers came from Maria Callas, who recorded the role for EMI with Karajan in 1955: an intimate and revealing portrait specifically created for the microphone. Where Callas and Karajan conjured forth a Butterfly who links Wagner's Isolde to Debussy's Mélisande, Scotto was determined to create a real theatre reading, which would combine intimacy and power. As Scotto argues in her autobiography, More than a Diva (New York, 1984), Butterfly is a woman not a child. By the age of 15, she has already experienced poverty, shame, the death of her father and such sexual experience as the role of a geisha demanded.
Critics seeking a bel canto Butterfly have occasionally expressed reservations about Scotto. Writing in the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera (London, 1993), London Green countered: Hers is a splendid voice for Butterfly: lyric, full, mobile and forward, with an inimitable flavour and an ability to penetrate the orchestra by means of colour and focus. The lower voice is uniquely shadowed without being dark, the very top is a little wiry, and it all retains a distinctive quality which suggests the Oriental.
The genius of the reading lies in the detailing. At the heart of the performance is the letter-reading scene and Butterfly's revelation that she has a son by Pinkerton. At first, Scotto is the excitable child, but the remark in Pinkerton's letter "perhaps Butterfly does not remember me" draws from her a response which in Scotto's enunciation marries barely suppressed amusement with anger, pain and incredulity. When Sharpless advises her to accept Yamadori's offer of marriage, her uttering of the word "Voi?"("You?") is alone worth the price of the recording.
Scotto takes the death scene to new heights, holding the ritual and individual elements in an ideal balance, The phrase "muore Butterfly", in which she tells her child that she is about to die, is marked to be sung "with a weeping voice" but, as Scotto has pointed out, no singer can actually afford to weep. Her shaping and timing of the phrase (incomparably supported by Barbirolli) is deeply touching, but it is almost immediately surpassed by her even more affecting enunciation of what is arguably the most heart-rending phrase in the entire opera: "Il materno abbandono".
When Barbirolli returned to London after the sessions (finished with a minute to spare after a violent thunderstorm delayed the recording of the "Flower Duet"), he told an interviewer: "My appetite for opera has been re-whetted". Listen to the orchestral aftermath of the moment when Butterfly produces the child in the scene with Sharpless and you will hear the evidence. This is conducting "from the heart to the heart", fierce yet noble, spontaneous-seeming yet superbly judged. That, his rubato-laden but inch-perfect accompaniment of Scotto's uniquely detailed performance of the title role, helps make this Butterfly the unforgettable recording it undoubtedly is.
Giacomo Puccini & Vincenzo Bellini PLAYLIST (reference recordings) : ruclips.net/video/mk0S8LGa4TE/видео.html
Love a good time stamp and yours is exceptional. I, also, appreciate that the associated commentary is in English. All very helpful to me. /:-)
Yes, thank you for the wonderful information about this recording. It adds to an already amazing experience. Scotto will always be my favorite Butterfly!
Un bel di vedremo
❤❤❤
It's impossible to over listen to this masterpiece. I do, indeed come back to this recording again and again. Renata is magnificent here, she brings tears to my eyes at the end of Act 1's love scene. Carlo is at peak performance, with the best tonal control one could demand. The rest of the cast sublimely delivers what Sir Barbirolli expects of them, and the orchestra, as well, the first violin cries. It's so beautiful. I'm so very grateful to you, CM/RR, for sharing this magnum opus - it's stunning from the beginning to the sublime, beyond description ending. /:-)
The present recording was made in the Rome Opera House in August 1966. Astonishingly, it was the 67-year-old Sir John Barbirolli's first major opera recording. Both his father and grandfather had been members of the orchestra at La Scala, Milan, and Barbirolli himself had begun his conducting career in opera (Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Verdi's Aida, and Madama Butterfly on tour with the British National Opera Company in 1926). "What Mr Barbirolli will do with other masters remains to be proved," wrote Samuel Langford, grandest of contemporary critics, in the Manchester Guardian. "In Puccini at least he is an absolute master. " Barbirolli went on to conduct memorable performances of Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden, but orchestral appointments in New York and with the Hallé in Manchester turned his career away from the theatre.
For Barbirolli, the 1966 Butterfly was thus a double homecoming: to opera and to Italy. The Rome players, who weeks earlier during a recording of L'elisir d'amore had played as badly as it is possible to play and still get away with it, responded with respect and affection to Barbirolli's heady mix of no-nonsense discipline, Italianate passion, and a sharp-eyed reading of Puccini's score. Their manager observed: "What impressed me was the beauty of the sound when the orchestra was playing and the silence when it was not!"
Barbirolli was given a superb cast: Renata Scotto, the finest Butterfly of her generation, the unfailingly stylish Carlo Bergonzi, whose unavailability had caused Barbirolli to turn down an earlier offer to record Aida, and Rolando Panerai in the crucial role of Sharpless, the only person in the drama who truly understands both Butterfly and Pinkerton. A late replacement for Peter Glossop, Panerai was paid a hefty flat fee for his part in the recording, and rightly so. In terms of musical characterisation, there is none finer on record.
Scotto was 19 when she sang her first Butterfly, in Savona in 1953. It was a role she took to instinctively, as the distinguished pre-war soprano Mafalda Favero instantly recognised. Favero taught Scotto how to sing dramatic lines without forcing the voice, but she also issued a warning quarried from personal experience: "Be careful. The role is a killer. Remember that you have to know your strength and that you can't waste any of it because you will need it all to say farewell to your life and your child in the last act."
Further pointers came from Maria Callas, who recorded the role for EMI with Karajan in 1955: an intimate and revealing portrait specifically created for the microphone. Where Callas and Karajan conjured forth a Butterfly who links Wagner's Isolde to Debussy's Mélisande, Scotto was determined to create a real theatre reading, which would combine intimacy and power. As Scotto argues in her autobiography, More than a Diva (New York, 1984), Butterfly is a woman not a child. By the age of 15, she has already experienced poverty, shame, the death of her father and such sexual experience as the role of a geisha demanded.
Critics seeking a bel canto Butterfly have occasionally expressed reservations about Scotto. Writing in the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera (London, 1993), London Green countered: Hers is a splendid voice for Butterfly: lyric, full, mobile and forward, with an inimitable flavour and an ability to penetrate the orchestra by means of colour and focus. The lower voice is uniquely shadowed without being dark, the very top is a little wiry, and it all retains a distinctive quality which suggests the Oriental.
The genius of the reading lies in the detailing. At the heart of the performance is the letter-reading scene and Butterfly's revelation that she has a son by Pinkerton. At first, Scotto is the excitable child, but the remark in Pinkerton's letter "perhaps Butterfly does not remember me" draws from her a response which in Scotto's enunciation marries barely suppressed amusement with anger, pain and incredulity. When Sharpless advises her to accept Yamadori's offer of marriage, her uttering of the word "Voi?"("You?") is alone worth the price of the recording.
Scotto takes the death scene to new heights, holding the ritual and individual elements in an ideal balance, The phrase "muore Butterfly", in which she tells her child that she is about to die, is marked to be sung "with a weeping voice" but, as Scotto has pointed out, no singer can actually afford to weep. Her shaping and timing of the phrase (incomparably supported by Barbirolli) is deeply touching, but it is almost immediately surpassed by her even more affecting enunciation of what is arguably the most heart-rending phrase in the entire opera: "Il materno abbandono".
When Barbirolli returned to London after the sessions (finished with a minute to spare after a violent thunderstorm delayed the recording of the "Flower Duet"), he told an interviewer: "My appetite for opera has been re-whetted". Listen to the orchestral aftermath of the moment when Butterfly produces the child in the scene with Sharpless and you will hear the evidence. This is conducting "from the heart to the heart", fierce yet noble, spontaneous-seeming yet superbly judged. That, his rubato-laden but inch-perfect accompaniment of Scotto's uniquely detailed performance of the title role, helps make this Butterfly the unforgettable recording it undoubtedly is.
Thanks a lot!
Bravo!
The Great Bergonzi--what a treat!
The true star of this recording.
I'm grateful for sharing this wonderful recording. I saw Butterfly on Oct 18 2023 at Detroit Opera House with Karah Son in the leader. I shared this glorious experience with a friend saying that my all time dream is to see Butterly at La Scala. I was surprised when she said that in fact she saw the production at La Scala with Renata Scotto when she was studying art in Italy. Sublime!
Even if you don’t know Italian you can’t help being charmed by Bergonzi’s mellifluous voice. Desert island recording!
He's the real star of this set. Such a shame they didn't cast a soprano who had the right voice type for the part.
I feel so lucky to have found this
--- way back in the day, I taped a broadcast of this production from the BBC 💔 The cassette was somehow mislaid......
More recently, I thought of purchasing the recording from a certain Mail Order Firm -- the DVD is, not surprisingly. a collectible with an astronomical price......
So, now I come full circle, & this presentation sounds perfectly fine, even on my phone!
So, many thanks for making a little dream come true 💔
From Lockdown Brighton 🌈 UK
take care & be well y'all!
🙏🏼🌹🙏🏽
Thank you very much for this masterful performance that I have listen as an homage to the great diva that left us last week.
I come back to this after Renata Scotto passed away, but there's more to this recording than one singer. Besides Scotto, Bergonzi and Panerai were also at their considerable best, and it feels like a shame Barbirolli didn't record more operas. One of the all time great opera recordings.
The greatest Butterfly ever, Scotto breaks your heart into a thousand pieces every time. True Verismo! 🖤
Yes! I believe if Puccini was alive to hear this he would exclaim, "Finalmente ho trovato la mia farfalla!" /:-)
And your eardrums each time she screeches her high notes.
Everything about this performance is so thrillingly individualistic, from the highly specific Butterfly to the idiosyncratic but totally echt conducting of Barbirolli. Bergonzi, like Scotto, is musician and poet. Other recordings may hold other kinds of appeal, but this one is penetrating and overwhelmingly emotional.
La más sublime interpretación de esta Opera de Operas.....genial Scotto....
Thank you. Beautiful opera.
Questa edizione con questi cantanti x me è fra le migliori
Franchement j'adore. Merci.
RIP Renata Scotto 🌹🌹🌹
Grazie tante Renata
Absolutely outstanding performance.
To me, Callas will also be La Davinia. But Renatta Scotto will never be surpassed in her Che tu Madre and Con onor and Tu, tu, piccolo Addio. With goosebumps, I weep EVERY TIME.
Gran Opera. Y de gran tristeza. Excelente versión. Muchas gracias Classical Music.
la mia prima madama butterfly... avevo 13 anni... che ricordi
An absolutely sublime recording. And isn't Rolando Panerai's voice just gorgeous?
Renata Scotto was sublime in this role!
Screeching all your high notes doesn't make you sublime.
the definitive Cio Cio San! None better!
Thank you so much - that was sheer heaven!
Beautiful .
Bellissima interpretazione di tutti gli interpreti Sopra tutti emerge Butterfly
I have no words. That's all 🌹
Merci!
Musica stupenda, evviva Puccini
Sublime Renata💖👏🌹💖
Riposi in pace . Forse la piu' grande Butterfly... ❤
Excellent
La seule cantatrice qui atteint le niveau de la Callas dans ce rôle…
....and that whole "intermezzo" section from 01:48:00....the complexity and sophistication.....OMyGod....How did Puccini even conceive it?????
Because he was Puccini ...
Thank you and Happy New Year!
Gosh, she sounds great! I heard her in Manon Lescaut in Dallas 1981 and thought she sang terrifically well AND acted with pizzazz!
I will never understand, tho, how at the end of "un bel di" an operatic master lie Puccini gave the soprano the required dramatic high note but then wrote breaks the long-held high note by having another syllable. Why didn't he write that dramatic note as one sustained tone? (1:05:45-1:05:55)
Does anyone know why Puccini chose to open this Japanese-American opera with a FUGUE?
Although I really love Barbirolli's conducting, it is really hard for me to listen to any other Butterfly than Freni's (Karajan).
@Galeyn: Try harder.
46:47
L'unica vera Butterfly
Is it posible to access the cue file about this recording?
Who is dat sittin up in the tree that Butterfly is starring at?
Il pettirosso
@joevogue1146: What’s it to you? Butterfly got nuf on her mind that she needs some time alone to chill. Lookin’ at dah birds
She was 32 here.
I just now realized that RIGHT! I'm not familiar with hardly any Barbirolli Opera recordings! Scotto is fine. She was actually a pretty fair actress. Puccini was her strength......though she never had the pureness of tone that Mirella Freni had.
"I'm not familiar with hardly any Barbarolli recordings.". So you're very familiar with them, then?
@@detectivefiction3701Not his opera recordings but definitely his recordings of British Composers and his recordings of Mahler. He was the finest British Conductor of Mahler IMO. I was familiar with Renata Scotto from many other performances and recordings over the years.
1:24:16
29:23
I love callas but scotto is my prefered butterfly and barbirolli is much better than karajan
Bergonzi, Panerai and Barbirolli are great, but Scotto is overrated.
Horses for courses; I love Scotto but have no need for Bergonzi or Panerai.
Scotto: a lyricalleggero soprano with a colorless voice and ugly strident top, and as an artist : false emotion
@@BirdArvid Please tell me where Carlo Bergonzi fails here?
@xxsaruman82xx87: We’ll I guess she agrees with you because she commits suicide at the end. But if she is overrated at least she has something to show for it unlike you.
I never liked Scotto's cold, shrill, unsteady voice, or Barbirolli's slow, portentous, un-Italianate tempi.
The whole thing, though, is very expertly executed.
"Voce fredde ,stridula e instabile"ma che fesserie scrive!Ad averne di così brave!!!!!
😂😂😂😂😂😂
I really like the quality of this recording, but I can't get over Scotto's annoying voice. Can someone recommend me any other great recording? (I was trying Karajan's but the sound quality is rather off-putting)
What about Scotto's voice do you find annoying?
@@detectivefiction3701 I would describe it as bleating. Sorry. I'm not sure if it is just her take on a japanese character or if it is her normal voice.
She did have a lot of vibrato, but I find that most Italian sopranos--or Italian opera singers in general--have the same.
@@detectivefiction3701 I can't recall having a problem with any singer until now. But I'm not really an opera buff.
Victoria de los Angeles (Santini, EMI, 1959)?
Trying to be as beefy as Tebaldi and as expressive as Callas will ruin your voice - and the ears of the listeners - when nature has equipped you with a leggero voice of limited power and ditto tone colour. Awful.