[Met Performance] CID:159190



Madama Butterfly
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, March 6, 1952




Madama Butterfly (316)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/ Giuseppe Giacosa
Cio-Cio-San
Victoria de los Angeles

Pinkerton
Giuseppe Di Stefano

Suzuki
Hertha Glaz

Sharpless
Frank Valentino

Goro
Alessio De Paolis

Bonze
Lorenzo Alvary

Yamadori
George Cehanovsky

Kate Pinkerton
Anne Bollinger

Commissioner
Lawrence Davidson


Conductor
Fausto Cleva







Review 1:

Review of Cecil Smith in Musical America

A greatly altered cast offered, in the season's seventh performance of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," Victoria de los Angeles in her first Cio-Cio-San of the year and the first appearance at the Metropolitan of Giuseppe Di Stefano as Pinkerton and Herta Glaz as Suzuki. The singers retained from earlier performances were Frank Valentino as Sharpless and, in shorter roles, Anne Bollinger, Alessio de Paolis, George Cehanovsky, and Lawrence Davidson. At the last minute Lorenzo Alvary stepped in as the Bonze (or "Uncle-Priest," as the Metropolitan program calls him) in place of Norman Scott, who was ill. Fausto Cleva again conducted.

After a first act that was emotionally detached and technically painstaking but over-cautious, Miss de los Angeles' singing grew constantly in freedom, color, and communicative warmth. She made the final scene deeply moving not only with tones that were charged with pathos but also with patterns of action that were simple, genuine, and to the point. As a vocal characterization her Cio-Cio-San did not seem on this occasion the equal of her Manon, partly because of her rather blank and literal view of much of the first-act music and partly because in later scenes she tended to sacrifice delicacy of nuance to breadth of delivery. But it was none the less a distinguished performance - in some passages the best, from the vocal point of view, to be encountered at the Metropolitan.

Miss Glaz's Suzuki was competent if untouched by personal imagination. Mr. Di Stefano's Pinkerton was lifeless in action and utterly routine in song. Many tenors sound better in this Puccini score than in almost any other music; Mr. Di Stefano, perhaps because he seemed to be still thinking hard about the notes, sounded less well than usual. Mr. Alvary's Uncle-Priest was forceful to the point of recoiling in fear from gestures by Mr. Di Stefano that would scarcely have alarmed a mosquito. Mr. Cleva was in a sentimental mood, and often let the performance drag in unwonted fashion as he tried to squeeze the last drop of expression out of the lyric lines in the orchestra.



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