Puccini Madama Butterfly

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Giacomo Puccini

Genre:

Opera

Label: Grand Opera

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 144

Mastering:

ADD

Catalogue Number: 425 531-2DM2

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Madama Butterfly Giacomo Puccini, Composer
Angelo Mercuriali, Goro, Tenor
Carlo Bergonzi, Pinkerton, Tenor
Enzo Sordello, Sharpless, Baritone
Fiorenza Cossotto, Suzuki, Mezzo soprano
Giacomo Puccini, Composer
Lidia Nerozzi, Kate Pinkerton, Mezzo soprano
Michele Cazzato, Prince Yamadori, Baritone
Oscar Nanni, Zoraide, Bass
Oscar Nanni, Yakuside, Bass
Oscar Nanni, Registrar, Bass
Oscar Nanni, Yakuside, Bass
Oscar Nanni, Yakuside, Bass
Oscar Nanni, Registrar, Bass
Oscar Nanni, Yakuside, Bass
Oscar Nanni, Registrar, Bass
Paolo Washington, The Bonze, Bass
Renata Tebaldi, Madama Butterfly, Soprano
Santa Cecilia Academy Chorus, Rome
Santa Cecilia Academy Orchestra, Rome
Tullio Serafin, Conductor
Virgilio Carbonari, Imperial Commissioner, Baritone
Tebaldi as Butterfly is a dramatic spinto in a part which we all instinctively want to be sung by a fragile lyric voice. We are wrong, of course: Butterfly is Puccini's most taxing soprano role (Turandot's tessitura is higher, but Butterfly is on stage and uninterruptedly at the centre of attention for vastly longer) and the sort of voice that by its very timbre might conjure up a pitifully vulnerable 15 year old would not have the stamina for Puccini's longest love duet (pitilessly accompanied at times), still less for the 45 - minute sequence of solos and duets with not a moment's respite that makes up Act 2 scene 1.
Tebaldi has ample reserves of opulent tone, a seamless line and the ability to intensify that line without breaking it. She can also sing quietly, and when she does so she is touching: in her proud recollection of Pinkerton's promise to return, in the scene where Sharpless tries to read the letter revealing her lover's faithfulness. Detailed responsiveness to words, however, was not in Tebaldi's temperamental armoury, and her principal histrionic resources are an assortment of gasps, an irritating laugh (when confessing that she is ''just 15 years'' old, when reproving her friends for addressing her as ''Madama Butterfly'' now that she is ''Madama F. B. Pinkerton'') and the occasional bending of Puccini's melodic line. It is finely sung, but in no sense a characterization, and you only have to turn to Mirella Freni's two recordings of the role (in Karajan's 1975, Decca account, issued on CD in June 1987, and Sinopoli's for DG) to realize how many opportunities for poignant and subtle portraiture Tebaldi misses.
Serafin makes up for some of the lack, of course, with his characteristically fine-detailed and ardent conducting (not so beautiful a reading though, as either Karajan's or Sinopoli's and less full-bloodedly passionate than Barbirolli's on EMI). Bergonzi counts for a good deal, too (he is in warm, full voice) but Cossotto's Suzuki sounds a bit shrill in this rich and spacious but rather bright recording, while Sordello's Sharpless is gruff and impassive.
Barbirolli's version is this set's only rival at mid price, its sound is brighter still, which gives an occasional sharp edge to Renata Scotto's moving and finely scaled account of the title-role. For her sake, though, and for Barbirolli's (the tenor is Bergonzi again) I would prefer it to the reissued Decca. The earlier Karajan set for EMI is in mono but has Callas as Butterfly. It is a case here of scaling down a huge personality rather than a huge voice, and many people find her more successful at this than I do; her Pinkerton, likeable but not wholly idiomatic, is Nicolai Gedda. For what is to my mind the finest assumption of the title-role on record, Freni's, you will have to pay a very great deal more, since both Karajan's Decca account and Sinopoli's DG spread over three full-price CDs. To clinch the matter Karajan also has in Pavarotti by far the best Pinkerton available (Sinopoli's tenor is Carreras, good, but not very good).'

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