Madame Butterfly by Puccini, Erb 19 Jan 2022, Minn (2022/2022), Immexxi minn Dieter Martin Kaegi, Surmast Direttur Alexander Anisimov, Samara Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Samara, Russia

Puccini was already a popular composer, whose operas were staged at the best theater in Italy - La Scala - when in 1900 in London he got to the performance of David Belasco's play "Madama Butterfly". A few years later, the story of a young geisha betrayed by an American sailor received a musical embodiment. The first production of Madama Butterfly failed. The stubborn Puccini refined the opera again and again and brought it to perfection. There is nothing random or ill-conceived in Butterfly. The action of the opera takes place in Japan, and in order to create a real oriental flavor, Puccini communicated with the Japanese and studied the notes of Japanese songs. In "Madama Butterfly" there are no less than a dozen authentic melodies from the homeland of Cio-Cio-san. And in the orchestra, a whole palette of percussion instruments is responsible for Asian colors: Japanese bells, European glockenspiel keyboard bells, tubular bells and a gong. Puccini masterfully builds up tension. In the first act, everything seems gentle, light and carefree - even the cynicism with which the marriage of Butterfly and Pinkerton is arranged. The second act is a painful contrast between Butterfly's unwavering hope and common sense. In the third act, the heroine's self-deception dissipates, and the denouement comes slowly and inevitably. Butterfly's monologue before she commits suicide is one of the most powerful operatic endings in history.