Arturo La Porta Philip Maero Robert Kerns - Puccini Madama Butterfly (34 tracks) +Album Reviews

Leontyne Price Soars to the Heights of Passion

J. Poss | Pahrump, Nevada | 03/13/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Leontyne Price shines as one of the greatest Butterflies in this 1962 recording. Her performance is as complex as the character she portrays. But above all, her performance is passionate! She controls her beautiful instrument with amazing subtleties and can soar when needed sending chills up and down your spine. Richard Tucker is also quite good as well as the supporting cast. There are so many memorable moments in this recording. One in particular is the flower song in Act 2. Leontyne Price and Rosalind Elias sing so perfectly together they almost sound like one voice, it's extraordinary and moving. Erich Leinsdorf direction is superb and very dramatic. Finally we have a humming chorus that you can actually tell that they are humming and it is in perfect balance with the orchestra. In many other recordings the chorus is drowned out by the orchestra. The humming chorus has always been the most touching moment of all opera for me. It's night and everything is hope and joy for butterfly in anticipation of Pinkerton coming back after 3 years of waiting but yet with tinges if melancholy overshadowing it. It is so unbelievably beautiful. The recording, the first opera made in RCA's new Italiana Studio A in Rome, is excellent for 1962. The orchestra and singers are perfectly balanced. It is not plagued by distortion during the singer's forte passages like earlier opera recordings. Also, there is a smooth and more open yet detailed quality then earlier recordings. In summary, this is one of the most passionate, beautiful, heartfelt and moving performances of this great opera ever. A must have no matter how many recordings you might have of this opera."

The Most Beautiful Butterfly On Record

Rudy Avila | Lennox, Ca United States | 11/13/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This 1963 studio recording of Madame Butterfly is unquestionably the most beautifully and expressively sung, boasting the talents of singers who are yet to be surpassed - Leontyne Price as Butterfly, Richard Tucker as Pinkerton and Rosalind Elias as Susuki. Erich Leinsdorf conducts with attention to detail and makes the score a balance of dramatic fatalism and beautifully and poetically rendered lyricism. In '63, Leontyne Price had rocketed to fame after her Met debut and Richard Tucker was stil in his own prime and Rosalind Elias was another big star at the Met. This recording, if anything, demonstrates the actual kind of singing and interpretation that must have been staged at the Met around this time. The digitally remastered sound is crisp and voluminous. Turn up the volume in such moments as the Act 1 Finale-Duet "Vieni La Serra". When Richard Tucker and Leontyne Price belt out this beautiful and harmonic duet, it will be unlike anything you have ever heard. Tucker as Pinkerton is incomparable. Only Luciano Pavarotti, with his brash but light, nearly Broadway voice, is the only other tenor perfect for such a role. Tucker understands that Pinkerton is no heroic tenor we root for. He is not Cavaradossi, nor Rodolfo or even Calaf. He is instead a coward, a deceitful hypocrite and fits a negative profile of the American male. Richard Tucker did not possess a huge voice, nor a dark one, and his Pinkerton is markedly lighter when compared to the Pinkertons of Mario Del Monaco or Placido Domingo. But a lighter-toned tenor is a more convincing Pinkerton, who is vulgar, careless and insensitive. A bigger voice only makes him grander and more sympathetic. Thus, Tucker, Pavarotti and Giuseppe Di Stefano make great Pinkertons. Mezzo soprano Rosalind Elias is superb as Susuki, with a melodic, rich mezzo voice that blends well in the Act 3 ensemble with Sharpless and Pinkerton. Her voice is also dramatic, though never outshining her soprano "mistress". Elias and Price's voices are beautifully harmonized in the Flower Duet. Elias is an intelligent musical artist and her career extended beyond minor mezzo roles like this one. She was able to mirror Christa Ludwig's career and take on diverse operatic roles like one of the characters in the 50's opera Vanessa, which she had already sung prior to this recording. Elias is simply glorious, her voice is never affected or divaesque.

As for the Butterfly, Leontyne is incredible. I only learned recently that she sang this role in her career. I cannot think of a better Butterfly, though I also dig Mirella Freni's Butterfly. The fact that Leontyne was an African-American from racially tense Mississippi of the 50's and 60's makes her position in the world of opera like a story of triumph. A black Butterfly ? Yes! It works! Leontyne's dramatic lyric-spinto voice is the precise manner which Butterfly should be sung. Because this is Leontyne Price in her youthful prime and not the more rough-toned Price of the 70's, she can convey Butterfly's youthful naivete with credibility. Very few sopranos can sound as young, yet as mature as Price. If anything, at times Price sounds too girlish and too sweet, her voice exuding innocence and oozing with honey. Thus, her Entrance Aria, Duets, "Un Bel Di" and other moments are full of beautiful lyrical strength. Nevertheless, she is vigorous in the Finale and her suicide is so intense that one cannot help but scream out or cry. She lives the role, no matter how many times critics insist she is no actress. Yes, she has all the perfect vocal abilities to master this role but she is also a Butterfly that can act! Leontyne Price was born to sing this role, to sing Puccini. This is her greatest work on recording, but if you dig Leontyne Price's clean, dramatic and vibrant voice of this time look for the following recordings: Verdi's Requiem under Fritz Reiner's baton, Tosca under Karajan with Giuseppe Di Stefano and Trovatore under Karajan with Franco Corelli. This was the best time of Price's heady career and she has never sounded more moving and beautiful than in this recording."

Leontyne Price is a Revelation

Pirooz Aghssa | Ann Arbor, MI United States | 07/29/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I know there are other recordings of Butterfly out there with Tebaldi, Scotto, Freni and others. They are all great singers.

But---

Nothing replaces Leontyne Price's devastating characterization of Butterfly. I have known this recording since I was about 12 years old and as I have grown older, my admiration and love for this Butterfly has increased.

Leontyne Price's voice is one of the wonders of the 20th century and here in this recording it is captured at its prime. Her high notes are the glory of opera. The interpolated high note at the end of her entrance music has never been equaled.

If you are only after one Butterfly recording, THIS IS IT. If you are collecting a number of them, there are other options.

one word of caution: if you choose this Butterfly, be aware that it will forever spoil this opera for you as you will not be able to listen to another one without feeling that something is profoundly missing."

Magnificent Madame Butterfly

American Evita | U.S. | 09/30/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"ABOUT THE ALBUM: PUCCINI (MADAMA BUTTERFLY), RECORDED IN ROME FOR LIVING STEREO LP'S, RELEASED 1962, RELEASED AS A CD IN 1996, 1999 Hybrid, CAST: LEONTYNE PRICE, SOPRANO (BUTTERFLY), RICHARD TUCKER, TENOR (B.F. PINKERTON), ROSALIND ELIAS, MEZZO SOPRANO (SUZUKI), ITALIANA OPERA ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS, ERICH LEINSDORF, CONDUCTOR.

Erich Leinsdorf's 1962 Madame Butterfly was made to showcase the talents of the emerging new star, Leontyne Price. Remember, it was 1962, Leontyne's sensational debut at the Metropolitan Opera took the opera world by storm and broke the color barrier. She was the first black opera diva. She sang all the most coveted roles in the most renowned operas of Verdi and Puccini. She was already being recorded to promote her artistry in the States and abroad, something which no black soprano was able to accomplish before her. Puccini's Madame Butterfly is perhaps his most unabashedly romantic opera, and remains popular and a blockbuster in any opera company to this date. It was completely inevitable for Leontyne to sing the role of Cio-Cio-San, though she never sang it on stage (for reasons I think owe to her strong, African-American appearance as being too difficult to transition, even in costume and make-up, to a frail and adolescent Japanese Geisha. Leontyne knew which roles fit her and frail heroines like Mimi in La Bohme or Violetta in La Traviata she said were not right for her healthy, robust voice and demeanor). Butterfly was a role she didn't care for, and one she never recorded twice. This is her only Madama Butterfly recording. It's my first Madame Butterfly and since my initial hearing, I've moved on to other sopranos and recordings, but this one still has a place in my heart and I always return to this recording. It's a magnificent work of drama with passionate interpretations by the lead singers, a fine orchestration of the Puccini score headed by Leindsorf, high quality sound and an example of one opera where everything goes right.

Leontyne Price had a terrific Puccini voice, so in all fairness, Puccini heroines were a specialty of hers (with the exception of Mimi in Boheme and Minnie in Fanciulla Del West). Butterfly's arias and music is very difficult to sing since it conveys not only intense dramatic suffering suited to a heavy dramatic voice (like Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi and Renata Scotto) but it's also a voice that is also suited to purely lyric singers who can portray frailty and youthfulness like Victoria De Los Angeles, Anna Moffo and Mirella Freni. Leontyne does not sound like a young girl, but who cares. Besides, at the time of this recording, the standard was always that a dramatic soprano sang Butterfy. Price nails what Puccini also wanted in the part but few sopranos understand. Butterfly is a victim, but Leontyne makes her a larger-than-life figure (a lot like Callas in this respect), and extremely noble, with dignity and blood-and-tears martyrdom. Leontyne manages to convey this martyrdom in a voice that changes appropriately from lovestruck, naive, idealistic young bride (Un Passo Ancora, Un Bel Di, the Flower Duet)to the excruciating, emotional and tragic climax at the end in which she kills herself. We are forced to feel a sense of greater tragedy in Butterfly than even La Boheme because Butterfly loses in love, is abandoned and dishonored. Somehow, Leontyne seemed to understand the racial issue in Butterfly that is always an unspoken presence. Pinkerton, a cocky American naval captain, is an insensitive bastard who finds in Butterfly only a fleeting romance and adventure while stationed in Japan. She takes the marriage seriously but he sees her only as his Japanese war whore. He marries an American woman and not even his son with Butterfly is enough to bond them. I always feel that Butterfly did the right thing in her suicide (that will show him, and all of them!) Leontyne, a black woman who met with racism at the start of her career, understands that Butterfly, who is not white, is dealt with harshly by a white American male. I think this was her mentality when she sang Butterfly, but we have only this amazing performance on recording and nothing else. She was not fond of the role but she did amazing things with the part, owing to her mastership of the Puccini repertoire. Her voice is, too critics and too operaphiles ears, too grand, too mature and too healthy sounding for the vulnerable Geisha. She even sounds very heroic. But this is only present in her fireworks aria and her climaxes. It works well with the ove Duet in Act 1. But you'll notice, too, how she is acting, and this was very rare for Leontyne, who was introspective and sang with an academic touch that was usually lacking in acting out her parts. Her voice slides into girlish laughter, coos and also tears (like when she's rejected by her family for marrying outside her race and religion). But when the opera takes the tragic turn at the end, she is clearly distraught, emotional and finally driven to despair. This is all present in the voice. Leontyne never acted as much as she did with Butterfly! Few "Butterfly" catchers (of the recordings), ever care for Leontyne's version but it's one that is simply too amazing to be ignored. I don't see her as being an authentic and pure Butterfly, but that's only because I'm used to seeing these modern sopranos who are not only gifted singers but who are also Asian and make for more realistic and convincing Butterflys on stage, film and recordings. Still, this is an example of a diva singing a diva's part and done as great as the rest of them. The textures in the voice range from innocence to sexually mature to anguish. If you analyze her vocal interpretation carefully, you'll find this to be a Butterfly with more depth and more adultness. She's not a stupid girl. She's a strong, willful woman who just happened to be mistaken about the man she thought loved her completely. Not wishing to be humiliated any further than she is, she steps out of the picture through killing herself. Despite the charged dramatic content, Leontyne maintains control when some sopranos make the error of making Butterfly nearly insane at the end. Leinsdorf knew just how to make her shine. She did her best work with Leinsdorf and her Aida from 1970 under his baton is her absolute best performance ever done on record.

Richard Tucker, an American tenor, was a top star at the Met at this time and he sang all the juicy roles opposite the leading ladies. He had recorded a La Traviata with Anna Moffo around this time but he was having a bad day or something because the performance is not his best effort. But this one's a winner. Though he is not convincing as a young man, and his voice is very mature, it's full of bombast, flair and the old-fashioned grandeur that still works for B.F. Pinkerton. In this way, he makes it a lot more cheesy and therefore a lot more fake so that we can really see that this guy is fake and does not love Butterfly. He's all talk but has no heart. Tucker's interpretation is extraordinary. Tenor studying the part ought to favor his version rather than Pavarotti's because Tucker is the real thing. He's American like Pinkerton and a fine actor. I love his performance and it's probably the last time he sang so splendidly on record. Next to Leontyne, his voice matches the forcefulness and virtuosity.

Leinsdorf, despite being Austrian-German, made a career out of recording Italian opera with success. He understood the drama and drank it up, and he has recorded Butterfly twice (there's one with Anna Moffo that pre-dates this one from 1957). He also recorded Aida and La Forza Del Destino. He also did "Salome" with Montserrat Caballe. It's amazing to hear him do "Don Giovanni" and "Butterfly". His is a cerebral conducting style that sometimes can become very fiery and theatrical and never has he done this better than with this Butterfly. Folks, this one is a miracle, really, because no black sopranos today even touch Butterfly and Leontyne Price has such a terrific style and grace and voice that seemed able to do anything. This is a Butterfly for the ages."

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