As has happened on several occasions, an unusual convergence of work demands has resulted in a slightly off-kilter publishing schedule. I have divided my consideration of the Decca/London/La Scala Madama Butterfly and the Bru Zane/Talens Lyriques Faust into two installments, the Butterfly herewith and the Faust in one week’s time. A few preliminary updates from my last full post: 1) Richard Dyer has corrected my reference to Jean Madeira as Suzuki. She sings that role on the Columbia recording under Max Rudolf (with Steber, Tucker, and Valdengo), and not on the Met Record Club release under Dmitri Mitropoulos with Dorothy Kirsten, Daniele Barioni, and Clifford Harvuot. Mildred Miller is the Suzuki there. 2) The onstage surprise celebration of Lawrence Tibbett’s 25th anniversary with the Met took place on the evening of the first performance of Peter Grimes in the 1949-50 season, not after the broadcast matinee a few days later, about which I wrote. 3) With respect to my speculations about Armed Forces Radio Network transcription discs (my suspected source for that same Grimes), Arianna Zukerman writes that the Library of Congress owns an extensive collection of those, which it is in the process of digitizing. There must be fascinating material there, some of it not preserved—or at least not well preserved—in any other form, including some of interest to lovers of opera and singing.

Finally: We had a rare old time in our June 10 “Porgy and Bess Roundtable,” produced by Joseph Horowitz’s Post Classical Ensemble. Horowitz has posted a brief blog entry on the event, accompanied by some video excerpts, here. I don’t yet know if the recording of the entire discussion (it lasted nearly two hours) will be made accessible in the future, but will keep you informed. And to our subject of the day—  

Aspects of the Butterfly production and performance were so off-putting to me that, after viewing Act 1, I very nearly decided to not write about it at all, or to simply report on the doings of the first act and allow us all to imagine the rest. If, I thought, this is what we’re to get at the opera world’s highest professional level, it does not matter if it’s the first, second, or fifth edition (see below) or the Bowery Follies edition—the emotional emptiness will be the same. And this wasn’t because the performance wasn’t succeeding on its own terms, but because of the terms themselves, which no longer seem open to question. Yet (I continued thinking) the restorations, of which the most extensive (in terms of elapsed time) were already past, are worth some notice and preliminary evaluation, and I was aware that the post-interlude parts of Act 2 (in other words, Act 3 in the common act division) held some changes of potential musical and dramatic import. So, after a fitful night’s sleep, I forged ahead.

All opera fans past entry level know that despite a cast headed by Rosina Storchio, Giovanni Zenatello, and Giuseppe de Luca, Madama Butterfly was a fiasco at its premiere (La Scala, Milan, 1904), and that the opera underwent extensive redaction and retouching before settling into the “standard edition” we almost always hear today. Minor revisions were made immediately, between the first and second performances of the original production; more extensive ones by May of that year, when Butterfly was performed with great success at Brescia; more again for its London premiere in 1905; and yet more for its first presentation in Paris (1906, at the Opéra Comique), on the basis of which the “definitive” vocal score, in Italian, was printed. There were even further changes, for Puccini re-inserted a few of the cut passages for a 1921 production at the Teatro Carcano, Milan. Although that edition could arguably be deemed the composer’s “final wishes,” it wasn’t taken up by the majority of the many companies undertaking the work—by any that I know of, in fact. ^(I)