# I May Have Fallen in Love with Italian Opera



## TennysonsHarp (Apr 30, 2017)

....Or Puccini, at least. I finished watching a series of short anime films called "Memories." The final installment in this series, "Magnetic Rose," is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. The music is what made it for me. Japanese composer Yoko Kanno composed the majority of the music, but she was heavily inspired by Puccini, in particular Madame Butterfly. The film even includes an aria from the opera towards the end. 

I may have fallen in love with Italian opera at this point. I never really cared about Italian opera in general, beyond Figaro and Don Giovanni, but now I need to hear more of Madame Butterfly. What recordings would you recommend I check out?


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Madame Butterfly: Karajan/ Freni/ Pavarotti on Decca or Antonio Pappano/ Gheorghiu / Kaufmann on Warner.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

TennysonsHarp said:


> ....Or Puccini, at least. I finished watching a series of short anime films called "Memories." The final installment in this series, "Magnetic Rose," is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. The music is what made it for me. Japanese composer Yoko Kanno composed the majority of the music, but she was heavily inspired by Puccini, in particular Madame Butterfly. The film even includes an aria from the opera towards the end.
> 
> I may have fallen in love with Italian opera at this point. I never really cared about Italian opera in general, beyond Figaro and Don Giovanni, but now I need to hear more of Madame Butterfly. What recordings would you recommend I check out?


Falling in love can be painful, exhilarating, maddening, frustrating AND expensive. It means you can't look around the way you did in the old days, you now have a reason to be faithful.

Warning it may last a lifetime. It's why we're here.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Sir John Barbirolli / Rome Opera with Renata Scotto & Carlo Bergonzi
...or if you don't mind mono...
Herbert von Karajan / La Scala with Maria Callas & Nicolai Gedda


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Renata Scotto IS Butterfly! She is phenomenal!!


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

Becca said:


> Sir John Barbirolli / Rome Opera with Renata Scotto & Carlo Bergonzi


I second this recommendation. :trp::trp::trp:


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

"After his long association with the Hallé and New York Orchestras, it was a shock to some when the then 67 year-old maestro Barbirolli, JB as he was known, was chosen for this major recording. Those who knew of his distinguished work at Covent Garden and other opera houses in the pre-war years would have been less so. There was perhaps another agenda. The Rome orchestra was getting sloppy and stroppy. I well remember JB returning from the sessions describing how on the first morning he had brought them to heel with a mixture of 'colloquial' Italian combined with a glare that could set fire to a score at twenty paces! There was more to it than that of course. Barbirolli knew and loved this music and the orchestra soon realised this. They came to know and love this small man and gave him one of their best performances in years. The whole glows with joint commitment. " - Robert J. Farr


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

I like the ones listed so far quite a lot, but my personal favorite is De Los Angeles/Bjorling/Santini. De Los Angeles is the most natural Butterfly, youthful and innocent. Bjorling is unmatched as Pinkerton for me, with Gigli running a distant second.









Other recordings I like a lot not mentioned so far is the Tebaldi/Bergonzi/Serafin, Price/Tucker/Leinsdorf, Freni/Carreras/Sinopoli, Dal Monte/Gigli/De Fabritiis, and De Los Angeles/Di Stefano/Gavazzeni. The last two are in mono, and Dal Monte is a curious performer who maybe sounds worse but might be more affecting than any other Butterfly, so it might be a good idea to sample the recording before settling on that one.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Callas / Karajan 

Scotto / Barbirolli

Freni / Karajan

Of course, lots of other good versions


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Callas/Gedda/Karajan


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## Macbeth (Sep 6, 2017)

As a Callas & Madama Butterfly fanatic I must recommend... the Barbirolli set first mentioned by Becca. It is simply perfect.

Scotto is a a fantastic Butterfly, sounds lovely or dramatic as required. Butterfly is a very, very difficult role, it's difficult to fulfill all of its demands. Some lean a bit too much to the dramatic and some too much towards the lovely. I'm not saying all mentioned sopranos don't make great Butterflies, but I'm picky with this role in regards to vocal colour. For instance, Freni has a far easier top than Scotto or Callas, but she hasn't got the same dramatic intensity. Callas is genius as always, but Puccini was not really her thing (Tosca aside) in vocal matter. She recorded a hell of a lot of Puccini because Angel Records demanded it, compare her studio output with her onstage performances and you'll see it's worlds apart.

On the other hand it's interesting to notice that for Callas, this is a rare case in which she recorded the part in studio before having performed it onstage, thus before having the chance to fully develop it and mature her own conception of the character. And the critics that attended her only four Chicago Butterflies were cold in general, but interestingly, if we believe this comment posted under a youtube video, this living witness named Robert Palmer tells us that
"I may be one of the few people still alive who saw the only three performances of Butterfly Callas ever did and they were in Chicago. Each performance was totally different and evolved from overdone mannerisms to a fully realized interpretation."
Quoted from here:





So, if this is true, we never hear how much Callas achieved with the part.

Victoria de los Ángeles was a perfect Madama Butterfly (you've got two studio recordings, first one with Giseppe di Stefano in mono and second one with Jussi Björling stereo). But even if she could be dramatic when necessary, she possessed such extreme innocence in her voice that this can only be the naive 15yo girl, making her Butterfly more straightforward and less of an evolving multilayered character than other performers.

As said, I think Scotto is here in a perfect balance.

Pinkerton is portraited by the gorgeous voice of Bregonzi, which is in itself an asset. Maybe Pavarotti's voice was even more gorgeous but in this role I much prefer him.

And there is Barbirolli's conducting, which is the decissive point that takes this recording miles ahead of its competitors.



Becca said:


> "The whole glows with joint commitment. " - Robert J. Farr


That's exactly it. This Butterfly sounds so gloriously coherent from beginning to end, that any other Madama Butterfly I've listened to since, seem unable to bring forth the full potential of Puccini's masterpiece.

I especially LOVE the beginning of the last act, from the "coro a bocca chiusa", following with that AMAZING AND UNEQUALLED TORRENT OF ORCHESTRAL EMOTION (who would expect to have an orchestral interlude as favourite part in an opera, especially one in wich voices are so very important) to Suzuki's sentence "già il sole" (it sounds so pale and sad).
But at the same time I can't cleanly separate this part from the rest of the opera, so wonderfully sticks it all together, I can only describe it as "organic".

In the famous overture, played with formidable pulse, if you pay attention, you can hear Sir. Barbirolli humming his own "coro a bocca chiusa". I used to find it distracting but now I feel it endearing.

In other words, this is the definitive Madama Butterfly.



TennysonsHarp said:


> ....Or Puccini, at least. I finished watching a series of short anime films called "Memories." The final installment in this series, "Magnetic Rose," is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. The music is what made it for me. Japanese composer Yoko Kanno composed the majority of the music, but she was heavily inspired by Puccini, in particular Madame Butterfly. The film even includes an aria from the opera towards the end.


Well, now all excuse me for a very long and very off-topic second part to this post.

As an opera aficionado I often find annoying the way in which cinema tends to use opera as a tool for achieving an _intensely dramatic _mood. Or a _romantic_ one, romantic in the cheap sense, _Pretty Woman_ I'm looking at you. Once you know those powerful works, once you know the _real thing_, you find this resource easy and shallow.

First time I saw Magnetic Rose (incidentally I think it's the first story of the three in Otomo's Memories, not the last one) I thought it had some very interesting ideas, but was overall kitchy.

For those interested we're talking about anime, Japanese cartoons, but for adults. No, I don't mean porn. It's a sci-fi / terror short film that was released together with two other short films to make the full running time length for a movie. But I believe all three parts are completely independent and Magnetic Rose is by far the most interesting.

There were many things I didn't like from it the first time. You can hear the aria "un bel di vedremo" at the beginning (not the end) aswell as "tu, tu, piccolo iddio" towards the end, and Tosca's "non la sospiri la nostra casetta" in between. This arias belong (in the film) to an opera diva (crafted after Callas's public image) and are recorded for the film. From how it sounds I imagine they hired the typical Asian soprano with a very sweet timbre, but clearly insufficient to face Puccini's heavy singing (un bel di ends rather screamy, and she sounds tiny when Butterfly's suicide aria is heard). Also, "un bel di" is an arrangement. The first verse repeats twice and the orchestral part accompanying performs some variation, from there they jump to the screamy conclusion of the aria.

Other music you can hear in the soundtrack is based in those previously mentioned arias and I'd say that the orchestral theme related to the character of the diva is inspired by the music of Manon Lescaut. There's also that beautiful choir with saxophone that genuinely belongs to Yoko Kanno, and the synth music. I think it's all quite skillfully put together.

It always strikes me that from an Asian pespective, especialy the Japanese, western aesthetics are often reduced to stereotypes, and when they try to recreate "European" looks they come up with something downright rococo. So this opera diva appears dressed as a doll, bows all over her dress.

Also the other characters are stereoptypes; there's this latin guy with long hair boasting about all the girls he had sex with, the main character is this tall blond German guy who, being an astronaut, lives in a farm (makes perfect sense). Oh, pay attention to the monstrous music played by the radio at his home, supposedly very German. Even the Japanese character is a stereotype.

All tese things made me cringe. I wondered, is this Japan's revenge for Madama Butterfly's kitchness? (kidding)

But for some reason the movie had something that made me revisit it from time to time, realizing each time what were its strong points.
It is a movie about what conforms personality. About external appearances vs. internal demons. If you can get pass what I've just mentioned, it is a very powerfull story. It is very loosely based in one of Otomo's short mangas (comic books). It draws from Alien and Solaris (the original by Tarkovsky, a film which in spite of its excellent ideas is super boring. I haven't seen its remake).

And this film, Magnetic Rose, was later plagarized in another (crappy) film, Event Horizon. Only they took out all the goodness of having an opera diva as the villian.
And using "un bel di" as a S.O.S. signal is so poetic...

Now I regard Magentic Rose as a very good film, and even wonder if those characters being obvious stereotypes is not a hint that they are not real, but the memories stored in some computer (according to the plot).

Anyway what I wanted to say is that one of the reasons MR is an interesting movie is Satoshi Kon's name being involved in the project. He was the main script writer. Satoshi Kon was a genius, who sadly had a short life due to fulminant cancer. All his works are about questioning what forms personality, what are its boundaries and the extreme situations that lead to madness.

Now TennysonsHarp, you HAVE TO WATCH "PERFECT BLUE", you hear me? It is a MASTERPIECE. And yes, it's cartoons too. To the question of why he never directed films shot with real actors Kon answered he wanted to have complete control over the image, frame by frame, and only animation could provide this.

Perfect Blue is one of my favourite movies, I've lost count of how many times I've seen it, and every time I watch it I realize it's even better.

For anyone doubting what I say, Darren Aronofsky, director of the overrated Black Swan, bought the rights to Perfect Blue, first to replicate one scene from the movie in one of his, Requiem for a Dream, and the overall story of Black Swan _is_ Perfect Blue, only changing a pop star idol for a ballet ballerina, and only that the original is a thousand times better.

And when you watch Perfect Blue you can go on with "Paranoia Agent".

Well I'll let it here, again sorry for bringing up an off-topic.


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## TennysonsHarp (Apr 30, 2017)

I did look up some information on Maria Callas, and her life story does resemble the tragic tale of the opera singer in Magnetic Rose. Her voice is divine. Also, I have put Perfect Blue on my to-watch list; I'll watch it once I can get my hands on it. I have seen Kon's Millennium Actress, and I really loved it. I've been listening to "Un bel di" a good chunk of my day today. It's a wonderful aria. 

Also, I wonder if Madame Butterfly would ever be adapted to anime. I can imagine it being an interesting production.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

> *Gramophone Classical Music Guide
> 
> 2010
> *
> ...


To bring some kind of balance.


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