[Met Performance] CID:167090



Madama Butterfly
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, November 19, 1954




Madama Butterfly (332)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/ Giuseppe Giacosa
Cio-Cio-San
Lisa Della Casa

Pinkerton
Eugene Conley

Suzuki
Mildred Miller

Sharpless
Frank Valentino

Goro
Alessio De Paolis

Bonze
Norman Scott

Yamadori
George Cehanovsky

Kate Pinkerton
Heidi Krall

Commissioner
Calvin Marsh


Conductor
Alberto Erede







Review 1:

Review of L. T. in the Herald Tribune

New Cio-Cio-San

The season's third performance of "Madama Butterfly," last night at the Metropolitan Opera, brought with it a Cio-Cio-San in the person of Lisa Della Casa, who was singing the role for her first time with the company. Other members of the cast included Eugene Conley as Pinkerton; Frank Valentino as Sharpless; Mildred Miller as Suzuki; and Heidi Krall, Alessio De Paolis, George Cehanovsky, Norman Scott, and Calvin Marsh. Alberto Erede again conducted.

Miss Della Casa should by all rights make an uncommonly striking Madama Butterfly, blessed as she is with beauty of person and a voice which, in its upper register, rings forth with fetching brightness and clarity. There is a curious detachment in her impersonation, however, and an air of personal containment which not only holds it securely on the singers' side of the footlights, but precludes any intimate contact with other players on the set. In the sweetly romantic scenes of the first act, one felt often that Cio-Cio-San was being not so much demure as obtuse, and in subsequent acts as well, the character's essential innocence and naïveté was less than fully exploited. Some-of these things may have been due to preoccupations inherent in a first performance. Ones hopes so, for Miss Della Casa possesses both visual and vocal qualities ideally suited to the part.



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