Opera Explained: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Audiobook CD)
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Item: 636943804926
Description
Opera Explained: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Audiobook CD)
Composer: Giacomo Puccini
Author: Thomson Smillie
Narrator: David Timson
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Naxos
CD Release Date: July 1, 2002
Run Time: 65 minutes
An introduction to Puccini’s opera, which is suitable for music-lovers as well as the most intellectual listener.
Madama Butterfly really does run the gamut of operatic emotion. The title heroine has a fragility wonderfully expresed in her entry music, deep sexual instincts as shown in the love duet, and immense tragic stature in her last hours. The fate of Madama Butterfly – married to an American sailor and then abandoned – engages our emotions, as it obviously did Puccini’s, to a degree equalled by few other opera heroines.
Opera Explained
This series introduces, in words and music, the plot and background of major operas. Using the principal themes and arias taken from the Naxos recording of the complete work, Thomson Smillie is informative yet entertaining, enabling the listener to get more from this remarkable art form.
History
Puccini’s original version of Madama Butterfly premiered at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1904. The composer was inspired to write an opera about a tragic love between a young Japanese geisha and an American Navy officer after seeing David Belasco’s play by the same name performed in London in June 1900. Puccini’s score includes many Japanese folk melodies, and is one of his most sweeping and sophisticated. It remains one of the world’s most popular operas.
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