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[Met Tour] CID:156870
Madama Butterfly
Fair Park Auditorium, Dallas, Texas, Sat, April 28, 1951
Madama Butterfly (309)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/ Giuseppe Giacosa
Review 1:
Review of John Rosenfeld in the Dallas News
Beautifully Sung Puccini and Stodgily Acted ?Butterfly?
Eugene Conley neither looked nor acted like the United States Navy nor did Victoria de Los Angeles look or act like a geisha girl but both sang very much like Puccini.
This established the more important values of Saturday night?s ?Madama Butterfly? given to an over-capacity audience of 4,396 customers, cheerful over the vocalism and comfortable in 60-degree Auditorium weather.
Giuseppe Valdengo as the United States Consul Sharpless, both sang like Puccini and looked like our diplomatic service, no matter which side is investigating. Mr. Valdengo brought not only a luscious baritone to Sharpless?s measures but also the most intelligent and explicit acting of the evening.
For once the second-act letter duet had its full dramatic meaning as well as its poignant phrases. Not the least of Consul Valdengo?s achievement was the appeasement of the local child cast as Trouble, the Pinkerton-Butterfly baby. There was Trouble of a dangerous kind including terrified howls that drowned out both Miss de los Angeles and the orchestra, which, as things were going, took precocious sonority.
The Spanish soprano is already a connoisseur?s item among record collectors. Her fame has traveled fast in the last three seasons and is not undeserved. For sheer weight and wealth of voice, for mastery of production methods and for an expressiveness that embodies both feeling for the text and sensitivity to the music, she is quite rare among today?s divas.
Butterfly?s entrance music, always a problem of both projection and intonation, was sung Saturday night with winning power and incandescent brilliance and never with the usual sharping or flatting to mar it. ?Un bel di? was encumbered by some fussy business but vocally had the same brilliance and fervor.
Equally remarkable were the impassioned love duet, the Duet of the Flowers and the heart-broken death scene. Few have heard before such vocal warmth from the throat and chest of the girl in a kimono. It was singing to realize the ardent writing of a composer who was never more inspired than when voicing a blameless heroine?s anguish.
Still Cio-Cio-San is not exactly right for Miss de los Angeles. The big tones of a Manon, Tosca, Elsa or Countess Almaviva are incongruous for the animated figurine of the geisha girl. There was no pretense that Miss de los Angeles?s substantial womanliness suggested the coyness and daintiness of the story or, for that matter, the tinkling descriptive music.
Mr. Conley?s Lieutenant Pinkerton presented another personality problem. While there was little warmth in either his enactment or his tone quality, the tenor is high, pure, young and useful. But Mr. Conley was never of man-size to dominate Cio-Cio-San or, for that matter, to stand off her 6-foot uncle.
Herta Glaz made a self-effacing Suzuki and a compatible vocal partner for the dulcet ?Tutti Fior.?
Alessio de Paolis? Goro, the marriage broker, remained as it has been a gem of characterization and incidental buffoonery. Lorenzo Alvary?s storming Uncle-Priest certainly meant business.
In smaller roles were Lois Hunt, George Cehanovsky and Lawrence Davidson.
Alberto Erede conducted the first of his two appearances here, the next being Sunday afternoon?s ?Il Barbiere di Siviglia.? He works without baton and takes everything in charge. His Puccini carried the show on the orchestral tide which may have not been the balance the composer intended. Sometimes the audience thought not.
The score has its compelling Italian intensity and the exotic touches that we accept as Oriental. Some pages are divine, especially the curtain music at the end of Act II with the humming chorus. The ceremonials of Act I are vivid and interesting but lacked detail Saturday night. Stage business also needed spacing out as there were too many moments when nothing happened.
This ?Butterfly? did not own the charm and spirt of an earlier one in the Metropolitan series, although it was quite superior in prodigious vocalism.
The audience was enthusiastic even when diverted by the mishaps. A large doll was used instead of the recreant tot for Butterfly?s death scene.
Search by season: 1950-51
Search by title: Madama Butterfly,
Met careers
Madama Butterfly
Fair Park Auditorium, Dallas, Texas, Sat, April 28, 1951
Madama Butterfly (309)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/ Giuseppe Giacosa
- Cio-Cio-San
- Victoria de los Angeles
- Pinkerton
- Eugene Conley
- Suzuki
- Hertha Glaz
- Sharpless
- Giuseppe Valdengo
- Goro
- Alessio De Paolis
- Bonze
- Lorenzo Alvary
- Yamadori
- George Cehanovsky
- Kate Pinkerton
- Lois Hunt
- Commissioner
- Lawrence Davidson
- Conductor
- Alberto Erede
Review 1:
Review of John Rosenfeld in the Dallas News
Beautifully Sung Puccini and Stodgily Acted ?Butterfly?
Eugene Conley neither looked nor acted like the United States Navy nor did Victoria de Los Angeles look or act like a geisha girl but both sang very much like Puccini.
This established the more important values of Saturday night?s ?Madama Butterfly? given to an over-capacity audience of 4,396 customers, cheerful over the vocalism and comfortable in 60-degree Auditorium weather.
Giuseppe Valdengo as the United States Consul Sharpless, both sang like Puccini and looked like our diplomatic service, no matter which side is investigating. Mr. Valdengo brought not only a luscious baritone to Sharpless?s measures but also the most intelligent and explicit acting of the evening.
For once the second-act letter duet had its full dramatic meaning as well as its poignant phrases. Not the least of Consul Valdengo?s achievement was the appeasement of the local child cast as Trouble, the Pinkerton-Butterfly baby. There was Trouble of a dangerous kind including terrified howls that drowned out both Miss de los Angeles and the orchestra, which, as things were going, took precocious sonority.
The Spanish soprano is already a connoisseur?s item among record collectors. Her fame has traveled fast in the last three seasons and is not undeserved. For sheer weight and wealth of voice, for mastery of production methods and for an expressiveness that embodies both feeling for the text and sensitivity to the music, she is quite rare among today?s divas.
Butterfly?s entrance music, always a problem of both projection and intonation, was sung Saturday night with winning power and incandescent brilliance and never with the usual sharping or flatting to mar it. ?Un bel di? was encumbered by some fussy business but vocally had the same brilliance and fervor.
Equally remarkable were the impassioned love duet, the Duet of the Flowers and the heart-broken death scene. Few have heard before such vocal warmth from the throat and chest of the girl in a kimono. It was singing to realize the ardent writing of a composer who was never more inspired than when voicing a blameless heroine?s anguish.
Still Cio-Cio-San is not exactly right for Miss de los Angeles. The big tones of a Manon, Tosca, Elsa or Countess Almaviva are incongruous for the animated figurine of the geisha girl. There was no pretense that Miss de los Angeles?s substantial womanliness suggested the coyness and daintiness of the story or, for that matter, the tinkling descriptive music.
Mr. Conley?s Lieutenant Pinkerton presented another personality problem. While there was little warmth in either his enactment or his tone quality, the tenor is high, pure, young and useful. But Mr. Conley was never of man-size to dominate Cio-Cio-San or, for that matter, to stand off her 6-foot uncle.
Herta Glaz made a self-effacing Suzuki and a compatible vocal partner for the dulcet ?Tutti Fior.?
Alessio de Paolis? Goro, the marriage broker, remained as it has been a gem of characterization and incidental buffoonery. Lorenzo Alvary?s storming Uncle-Priest certainly meant business.
In smaller roles were Lois Hunt, George Cehanovsky and Lawrence Davidson.
Alberto Erede conducted the first of his two appearances here, the next being Sunday afternoon?s ?Il Barbiere di Siviglia.? He works without baton and takes everything in charge. His Puccini carried the show on the orchestral tide which may have not been the balance the composer intended. Sometimes the audience thought not.
The score has its compelling Italian intensity and the exotic touches that we accept as Oriental. Some pages are divine, especially the curtain music at the end of Act II with the humming chorus. The ceremonials of Act I are vivid and interesting but lacked detail Saturday night. Stage business also needed spacing out as there were too many moments when nothing happened.
This ?Butterfly? did not own the charm and spirt of an earlier one in the Metropolitan series, although it was quite superior in prodigious vocalism.
The audience was enthusiastic even when diverted by the mishaps. A large doll was used instead of the recreant tot for Butterfly?s death scene.
Search by season: 1950-51
Search by title: Madama Butterfly,
Met careers