Soloists - PUCCINI: Madama Butterfly

Giacomo Puccini (1858 -1924)Madama Butterfly (Highlights)Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi IllicaMadama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) ..................................... MiriamGauciSuzuki ....................................................................Nelly BoschkowaF. B. Pinkerton ..........................................................Yordy RamiroSharpless .................................................................Georg TichyGoro ...................................................................... JozefAbelMother of Cio-Cio-San ................................................ AnnaTomkovicovaAunt of Cio-Cio-San ...................................................Maria StahelovaCousin of Cio-Cio-San ................................................. ElenaHanzelovaSlovak Philharmonic ChorusJan Rozehnal, Chorus-MasterCzecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava)Alexander RahbariGiacomo Puccini was born in Lucca in 1858 into a family with long-establishedmusical traditions extending back at least to the early eighteenth century. Itwas natural that he should follow this tradition and become a musician, andafter the death of his father, when the boy was five, it was arranged that heshould inherit the position of organist at the church of S Martino, whichmeanwhile would be held for him by his uncle. He was trained as a chorister andas an organist, and only turned to more ambitious composition at the age ofseventeen. A performance of Verdi's opera Aida in Pisa in 1876 inspiredoperatic aspirations, which could only be pursued adequately at a major musicalcentre. Four years later he was able to enter the conservatory in Milan,assisted financially by an uncle and by a scholarship. There his teachers wereAntonio Bazzini, director of the conservatory from 1882 and now chieflyremembered by other violinists for one attractive addition to their repertoire,and Amilcare Ponchielli, then near the end of his career.Puccini's first opera was Le villi, an operatic treatment of a subjectbetter known nowadays from the ballet Giselle by Adam. It failed to winthe competition for which it had been entered, but won, instead, a staging,through the agency of Boito, and publication by Ricordi, who commissioned theopera Edgar, produced at La Scala in 1889 to relatively little effect. Itwas in 1893 that Puccini won his first great success with his version of theAbbe Prevost's Manon Lescaut, a work that established him as a possiblesuccessor to Verdi. La bohème followed in 1896.Tosca was first staged in Rome in 1900, and was followed four years laterby Madama Butterfly. A sensational court case, after the suicide of aservant-girl falsely accused by Puccini's wife of a close relationship with herhusband, was partly instrumental in delaying further composition, until thecompletion of La fanciulla del West, a work set in the Wild West andfirst performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1910. La rondine wasstaged at Monte Carlo in 1917 and the trip