Puccini - Madama Butterfly / New master (Renata Scotto, Carlo Bergonzi - ref.rec.: Sir J.Barbirolli) 

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) : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mk0S8LGa4TE.html

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.

Even if you don’t know Italian you can’t help being charmed by Bergonzi’s mellifluous voice. Desert island recording!

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.

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! 🙏🏼🌹🙏🏽

The Great Bergonzi--what a treat!

Grazie tante Renata

The greatest Butterfly ever, Scotto breaks your heart into a thousand pieces every time. True Verismo! 🖤

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.

Thank you. Beautiful opera.

Thank you very much for this masterful performance that I have listen as an homage to the great diva that left us last week.

Questa edizione con questi cantanti x me è fra le migliori

Franchement j'adore. Merci.

RIP Renata Scotto 🌹🌹🌹

An absolutely sublime recording. And isn't Rolando Panerai's voice just gorgeous?

La más sublime interpretación de esta Opera de Operas.....genial Scotto....

Renata Scotto was sublime in this role!

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.

Musica stupenda, evviva Puccini

Absolutely outstanding performance.

Gran Opera. Y de gran tristeza. Excelente versión. Muchas gracias Classical Music.

la mia prima madama butterfly... avevo 13 anni... che ricordi

Thank you so much - that was sheer heaven!

Sublime Renata💖👏🌹💖

Beautiful .

I have no words. That's all 🌹

La seule cantatrice qui atteint le niveau de la Callas dans ce rôle…

Merci!

Bellissima interpretazione di tutti gli interpreti Sopra tutti emerge Butterfly

Excellent

Thank you and Happy New Year!

Riposi in pace . Forse la piu' grande Butterfly... ❤

....and that whole "intermezzo" section from 01:48:00....the complexity and sophistication.....OMyGod....How did Puccini even conceive it?????

Is it posible to access the cue file about this recording?

L'unica vera Butterfly

Who is dat sittin up in the tree that Butterfly is starring at?

46:47

She was 32 here.

29:23

Although I really love Barbirolli's conducting, it is really hard for me to listen to any other Butterfly than Freni's (Karajan).

1:01:50

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 love callas but scotto is my prefered butterfly and barbirolli is much better than karajan

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.

Bergonzi, Panerai and Barbirolli are great, but Scotto is overrated.

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)

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.