Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Met Live Broadcast CD) – Renata Scotto

Composer: Giacomo Puccini
Artists: Renata Scotto, George Shirley, Andrea Velis, Nedda Casei, Ron Bottcher, Gene Boucher, William Stanz, Lorenzo Alvary, Russell Christopher, Shirley Love, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & Chorus
Conductor: Francesco Molinari-Pradelli
Label: Metropolitan Opera
CD Release Date: December 13, 2021

Italian soprano Renata Scotto did not merely make her Metropolitan Opera debut on October 13, 1965, as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. She arrived that night, in every sense of the word. “It was an occasion for rejoicing, and there was plenty of it in the form of applause and welcoming shouts to the new artist, who above all, is distinctly an individual,” Louis Snyder wrote of her debut in the New York Herald Tribune.

“She sings musically and affectingly, with pathos and color and humor in the voice. In a manner to enfold the listener in the first row of the orchestra or the last row of the family circle, Miss Scotto is a singer for all price ranges. And they let her know it Wednesday night after “Un bel dì” with as loud an ovation as has been heard in the House this or maybe even last season. It would seem to be a case of instant love between Miss Scotto and the New York public.”

There could have been little doubt, then, that Madama Butterfly, with Scotto, had to be a part of the new Met Opera House’s inaugural season at Lincoln Center, in the much-loved Yoshio Aoyama production. When it opened there on March 3, 1967, critic John Ardoin of the Dallas Morning News hailed her Cio-Cio-San as “one of the supreme operatic characterizations of the contemporary stage.”

This disc captures the live broadcast recorded on March 18, 1967.

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