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Madama Butterfly
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, January 14, 1926
Madama Butterfly (183)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/ Giuseppe Giacosa
- Cio-Cio-San
- Florence Easton
- Pinkerton
- Beniamino Gigli
- Suzuki
- Ina Bourskaya
- Sharpless
- Giuseppe De Luca
- Goro
- Angelo Bad?
- Bonze
- Paolo Ananian
- Yamadori
- Max Altglass
- Kate Pinkerton
- Phradie Wells
- Commissioner
- Millo Picco
- Yakuside
- Paolo Quintina
- Conductor
- Tullio Serafin
Review 1:
Review of staff critic B.B in Musical America
Returning to the Metropolitan in a role very happily identified with each of the several stages of her career in opera, Florence Easton made the joys and sorrows of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" particularly poignant for Wednesday night's audience, by virtue of sympathetic acting and some very admirable singing. It was in this part that the singer first challenged attention in New York as a youthful artist whose future would bear watching. She was with the Savage English Grand Opera then, a wisp of a girl not long out of her 'teens.
Before fortune brought her to the Metropolitan, she had established herself in Berlin as one of the best of Butterflys, but because the role was for some time almost exclusive property of Geraldine Farrar at the Metropolitan it was not given to her in the first years of her engagement at the American opera house. It is a much more mature Easton who sings the part today, in appearance as well as in voice, than the one remembered from her debut at the old Garden Theater. Apparently she has put on weight since last season, and this was not entirely to the benefit of this role. But she sang with the mastery of voice production in which she is excelled by no other feminine artist at the opera house, and made the pathos of the later scenes more than commonly effective.
In the cast with her were Beniamino Gigli, who achieved Pinkerton's music better than he acted the American naval officer, and Giuseppe de Luca, a tuneful Sharpless who looked like an Italian baritone on the Riviera-which, after all, may not be such a different thing from being a consul for the United States in Nagasaki. Ina Bourskaya was a Suzuki of competence, and there was routined capability for the lesser roles. These were entrusted to Phradie Wells, Angelo Bada, Max Altglass, Paolo Ananian, Vincenzo Reschiglian and a juvenile Quintina. Mr. Serafin conducted and Puccini's music received its due.
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