Holiday Listening

Thought I'd put on something utterly gorgeous this evening, and reached for my cheap 2 CD set of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Got this yonks ago on a budget label - 1957, Rome Opera House, Erich Leinsdorf conducting. The sound is rather dry, but serviceable, and the music's just so darned succulent it's worth hearing with a less-than-lush acoustic as it gives access to more detail somehow. Anna Moffo's Butterfly sounds too old, of course - every Butterfly does. But that's part of the odd power of the piece. The complete lack of realism, the total artifice, points towards a meaning well outside itself and I think that works in rendering the pain of the exploited central figure. (You forget that according to the libretto she's only fifteen. And the age is repeated with varying degrees of lubriciousness by the gentlemen involved in determining her fate.)

It's as if the opera is a commentary on the misery of all exploited peoples rather than seeking to directly present that misery - which would be incongruous anyway in the splendour of the opera house. And, of course, the girl is much more than merely someone exploited. Her pain is transformed into the highest of art; her romantic desire transcends her misery.

I'd challenge anyone, regardless of musical taste, not to get swept away by the Pinkerton/Cio-Cio-San duet at the end of Act 1. Which, I suppose, is Puccini's point. You can hardly blame either of the two for messing up so spectacularly when they do it to such great music.