Opera in the Ozarks

The widely performed version of Giacomo Puccini’s beloved opera Madama Butterfly is not the same Madama Butterfly, which had its premiere at La Scala in February of 1904. The source for the eventual opera was a magazine story by John Luther Long. The magazine story was then turned into a short play by the American playwright David Belasco. Puccini saw a performance of the play while attending the London premiere of his opera Tosca at Covent Garden. Though Puccini’s grasp of the English language was poor, the heart breaking drama filtered through and eventually Puccini set it to music.

In January 1904, an ‘official’ reading of the libretto to members of the cast took place. Remember, the world premiere was to take place only a month later on February 17! Giuseppe Giacosa, one of the two librettists for Madama Butterfly, stood upon the stage of the opera house and declaimed the lines as the singers listened. The singers from that point on received their music in proof form, page by page as rehearsals began. Puccini’s publisher Guilio Ricordi forbade them to take the music from the theatre. The time was perilously short; there was very little time for Puccini to make changes before the premiere.

The first Butterfly was the highly regarded Rosina Storchio who had  been Puccini’s Musetta in La Bohême.  The role of Pinkerton went to a promising tenor named Giovanni Zenatello and the role of the Consul Sharpless went to a young Giuseppe De Luca. The conductor was Cleofonte Campanini who would eventually make his way to Chicago Opera. There he would mentor a young Isaac Van Grove who eventually would mentor a young Roger Cantrell at Opera in the Ozarks at Inspiration Point.



Opening Night

The Milanese public were not big fans of Puccini or of his high-handed publisher Giulio Recordi. Some of the public wanted Wagner… not Puccini. Some of the public didn’t care for Puccini because of his rivalry with Leoncavallo, the composer of I Pagliacci and Mascagni, the composer of Cavalleria Rusticana.

On opening night, this hostile public came for vengeance not opera. During the horrific performance, Storchio’s kimono caught a breeze on stage and billowed outward. One of the noisy public screamed out: Guarda!…Il Bambino di Toscanini! (Look!…the baby of Toscanini!) Arturo Toscanini would have been the natural choice as conductor for this world premiere, but the year before he left La Scala in protest over the Milanese public’s demand for encores. It was widely known among the public that Toscanini and Storchio were in the midst of a scandalous affair!

Nothing seemed to go well. Butterfly’s original entrance music (which Puccini altered later) bore too close a resemblance to his La Bohême and was catcalled. Puccini’s curtain call at the end of Act I was greeted with laughter. The final curtain was greeted by the public’s total silence. The only sound heard was the composer Mascagni’s loud weeping and angry tirade at their boorish behavior. There was only one performance. Puccini’s celebrity did not spare him from the critic’s harsh pen. Puccini had previously been in a serious automobile accident. He had been left with a broken leg which left him with a permanent limp and doctors also discovered he suffered from diabetes causing one reviewer to call Butterfly ‘that diabetic opera, the result of an automobile accident’.




Early Revisions

Puccini acted quickly on revisions after the disastrous La Scala opening. He deleted some character episodes involving Butterfly’s relatives and servants. He changed the opera from two acts to three by separating the second act into two parts. Pinkerton, who lacked any important music after Act I, was given a new aria in the new Act III.

The next performance took place three months later, fifty-five miles from La Scala in the town of Brescia. This time the opera was an unqualified success. It had the same cast and conductor with the exception of Butterfly which was sung by the Ukrainian dramatic soprano Salomea Krusceniski. Even Puccini admitted that Storchio might have been too ‘doll-like’ for the role.

The opening of ‘Butterfly’ in July of 1904 at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, was also a smash hit with the public. Yet, Puccini was still not satisfied and was acutely aware that a bad conductor could make the opera’s pace seem like there were too many words and too much music. In 1905, Covent Garden’s premiere had further cuts, as did a traveling production in the United States sung in English.



The Paris Version / Success At A Price?

At the time of the French premiere in 1906, Puccini was still making alterations to the music and structure of ‘Butterfly’. So far, the character of Kate Pinkerton, was ultimately shortened and music of her given to Sharpless. Act I had lost thirty pages of music and the two parts of Act II had been separated by an intermission. Puccini felt this revision went against his instincts. He wanted Act II to be performed in a single sweep, which meant the public would have been glued to their seats for an hour and a half. Puccini was quoted as saying: Monstrous…but the life of the opera depends on it!

The premiere took place at the Opera-Comique. The director of the Opera-Comique, Albert Carré, felt he knew the tastes of his working-class audiences. It was their custom to attend the opera after Sunday lunch at the nearby cafes. If Bizet’s Carmen had to conform to their musical palates, so must Puccini’s Butterfly. The changes were as follows:

1. Mrs. Carré nicknamed by Puccini as Madam Pomme de Terre (Mrs. Potato) was given the role and it had to be sentimentalized to her tastes.

2. Pinkerton’s racist manner must be softened and not address the servants in Act I as Ugly Mug I, Ugly Mug II or Ugly Mug III. Nor could he have them serve the wedding guests spiders and flies and other Japanese delicacies.

 3.  Kate Pinkerton’s character was softened. Originally she was 
 aloof, condescending, and insensitive to Butterfly and believes
 Japanese girls are pretty toys. 

4.  Albert Carré changed a section where Butterfly says Pinkerton paid 100 Yen for     
her and substitutes a line where Butterfly declares her intention to worship the same god as
Pinkerton with the music remaining the same.

Julian Smith, the editor of Ricordi’s latest edition of the opera feels the Paris version ‘successfully diluted’ Puccini’s original intentions. Changing a daring opera, unconventional in its structure and unsparing in its delivery of what for its time was an unusually pointed moral and social message into something perilously close to sentimental melodrama.



Conclusion


We now have four different versions of Madama Butterfly from which to choose. What did Puccini ultimately want? Since we have no definitive approved version by Puccini, three schools of thought have emerged.

1. There are the purist conductors and others who believe a composer’s first version is probably superior to later ones.

2. Others compromise by adding back a little of the deleted material of the first version.

3. Some treat the Paris version as the most authentic.  Musically it is the tightest or condensed of the other versions even though it makes for a longer performance.

You have the information. Make your choice. Open that expensive bottle of cabernet sauvignon you’ve been saving. Put on your favorite recording of “Butterfly’ and let the arguments begin. For all its strengths and weaknesses, ‘Butterfly’ remains one of the cornerstones of Puccini’s operas and one that speaks directly to the nobility of the human spirit and heart.