[Met Tour] CID:95740



Madama Butterfly
American Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Tue, March 8, 1927




Madama Butterfly (190)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/ Giuseppe Giacosa
Cio-Cio-San
Florence Easton

Pinkerton
Mario Chamlee

Suzuki
Ina Bourskaya

Sharpless
Antonio Scotti

Goro
Angelo Bad?

Bonze
James Wolfe

Yamadori
Pompilio Malatesta

Kate Pinkerton
Dorothea Flexer

Commissioner
Vincenzo Reschiglian

Yakuside
Paolo Quintina


Conductor
Vincenzo Bellezza







Review 1:

Review in the Philadelphia Record

Favorites Sing Puccini Opera

"Madama Butterfly" Enjoyed by Audience at Academy of Music

Some attractive new scenes and a very much Oriental performance of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" contributed last night to the decidedly successful production of the old favorite at the Academy of Music. The Metropolitan Company apparently regards the cast sent over annually, with some slight alterations, as one to insure perfect satisfaction, as indeed it is, although there might be some gratification in witnessing the interpretations of other singers in the prominent roles. Florence Easton, Mario Chamlee and Antonio Scotti are so familiar in this opera to audiences that practically every tone and gesture can be anticipated. This does not mean, however, that this trio of artists did not more than repay operagoes last night. With their associates, notable the fascinatingly graceful, subtle and extremely Oriental-looking Russian singer, Ina Bourskaya, they succeeded in giving a performance that aroused the greatest appreciation, seven or eight curtain calls following the second act, which was remarkable for its beauty and dramatic power.

Florence Easton, as Butterfly, never succeeds in conveying any feeling of an Oriental. Her assumption of the roles is always apparent, but she more than atones for physical discrepancies by her glorious singing, always true, expressive and infinitely appealing - she has real dramatic ability and rises to the intense moments of the tragic denoument more thrillingly than any soprano before the public. The beautiful voice of Mario Chamlee enthralled the audience during his regrettably brief enactment of Pinkerton, while Scotti, as Sharpless, never fails to make an impression. His lapse into English in toasting 'America forever" served as a reminder of the absurdity of presenting a work, written by an American, in Italian, one of the fallacies of our present system of opera.

The garden scene in the third act has been enhanced by some attractive settings, an ornamental lattice effect and a veritable fairyland house giving the environment a greater sense of the foreign.

Much of the musical success of the performance was due to the sympathetic conducing of Vincenzo Bellezza, who made of the orchestra a veritable poem of sound. His style of conducting was conducive to a certain intimacy of feeling, the actors and the story assuming a reality rarely experienced.



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