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A Metamorphic Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1979

Julian Smith
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Extract

The outlines of the history of Madama Butterfly are well known. The first performance took place at La Scala on 17 February 1904, and was one of the most spectacular flops ever seen at that famous opera house, or indeed at any other. Puccini immediately withdrew the opera and made a number of revisions. A few months later, on 28 May, the work was performed at Brescia, and was received enthusiastically by public and critics alike. Further alterations were made to the score during the next two and a half years or so, and by early 1907, following a series of performances in Paris, the version we know today had been arrived at.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 106 , 1979 , pp. 105 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 Though Mosco Carner and Ernest Newman have stated that Puccini's original intention to perform Act 2 without an interval, and with the curtain raised throughout, was better than splitting the act into two. See Carner, Mosco, Puccini: A Critical Biography (2nd edn., London, 1974), p. 398.Google Scholar

2 The version used by Herz is essentially the Brescia score, but with the trio and subsequent exit for Pinkerton in Act 3 part 9 in the original, La Scala, version.Google Scholar

3 John Luther Long, ‘Madame Butterfly’, Century Magazine, lv (1897), 374–92.Google Scholar

4 David Belasco, Madame Butterfly (New York, 1917). The play was first performed in New York on 5 March 1900. Its first London performance took place on 28 April 1900.Google Scholar

5 The draft libretto is in the Ricordi archives in Milan.Google Scholar

6 Carner, op. cit., p. 381.Google Scholar

7 Letter of 26 September 1905. Copies of the business correspondence issuing from the house of Ricordi are preserved in the Ricordi archive in Milan. They are organized by year, each running from the first day of July until the last day of the following June, and are in volumes each of 500 folios. The present reference is RC 05-06/5/333-4, i.e. Ricordi Coppialettere, year 1905–6, vol. 5, pp. 233–4.Google Scholar

8 Ibid.Google Scholar

9 RC 05-06/19/480.Google Scholar

10 RC 03-03/14/1.Google Scholar

11 RC 05-06/13/46.Google Scholar

12 RC 06-07/1/2.Google Scholar

13 RC 06-07/1/4.Google Scholar

14 RC 06-07/1/5, 93-5, 151.Google Scholar

15 Letter to Alfredo Vandini. Carteggi Pucciniani, ed. Eugenio Gara (Milan, 1958). pp. 333–4.Google Scholar

16 RC 06-07/1/193.Google Scholar

17 RC 06-07/4/10-13.Google Scholar

18 The frequent changes to vocal scores meant that Giulio Ricordi often had stocks of unusuable zinc plates on his hands. It appears that some of these he sold as scrap to builders. Denis Arnold recently alerted me to an interesting discovery at the home of Signor and Signora Leopoldo Amadio, of Farrà di Soligo, near Treviso. A large outbuilding put up in 1907 needed its roof replacing. The builders brought down from the roof various metal decorations, mostly in the form of spheres with small pinnacles attached. Some of these fell open and were found to have music engraved on them. As well as plates for an unidentified piano piece published by Ricordi were plates for the first French vocal score of Madam Butterfly.Google Scholar

19 Giulio Ricordi to Puccini, 29 November 1906, RC 06–07/8/27-9.Google Scholar

20 RC 06–07/4/10-13.Google Scholar