GRAND OPERA AT AUCKLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 502, 4 February 1949, Page 14

GRAND OPERA AT AUCKLAND

Italian Company Opens Season on February 23

PUCCINI’S opera, Madame _ Butterfly, founded on the story by John Luther Long, and the drama by David Belasco, has been selected to open New Zealand’s first Italian Grand Opera season in 15 years, at His Majesty’s Theatre, Auckland, on Wednesday, February 23. The New Zealand tour, which will occupy about three months, has been organised and will be presented by J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd., by arrangement with the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, and it is intended that the company should visit as many cities and towns as possible. The Italian principals will be supported by a picked Australian chorus and the operas will be accompanied by about 50

members of the National Orchestra of the NZBS. Madame Butterfly became, and still is, one of the most popular operas in the world. Puccini always maintained a special affection for it, perhaps because of the-hostility which nearly killed it at the outset. The collaborators had based their opera on an American play, seen by Puccini in London, which had immediately appealed to him owing to the vividness of the action. He had taken exceptional trouble with the music and confidently expected a success. -But at the first performance the opera was practically hissed ‘off the stage, in the main perhaps because the Milanese disliked the subject and resented the excessive length of the second, act; a little also because of organised opposition, Puccini, discouraged but not dismayed, retired to the country to recast it. He deleted an unnecessary number from the first act, and divided the last act into two, and three months later at Brescia Madame Butterfly, in its revised form, began its long and triumphant

career. In all of Puccini’s operas the music is essentially Italian in its easyflowing melody, its clearly pointed dramatic effect and its brightly. coloured orchestration. In his harmonies the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) composer, while never plunging headlong into modernism, was usually just original enough to rouse to attention the conventional opera-goer. Here is the repertoire for the Auckland season: Wednesday, February 23, Madame Butterfly; Thursday, February 24, matinee (opera to be selected), evening, La Tosca; Friday, February 25, Madame Butterfly; ‘Saturday, February 26, matinee, La Tosca, evening, La Boheme; Monday, February 28, La Boheme; Tuesday, March 1, Aida; Wednesday, March 2, La Boheme; Thursday, March 3, matinee. (opera to be selected), evening, Rigoletto; Friday, March 4, Aida; Saturday, March 5, matinee, Rigoletto; evening Manon; Monday, March 7, Aida; Tuesday, March 8, Manon; Wednesday, March 9, Cavalleria Rusticana, and Pagliacci; Thursday, March 10, matinee (opera to be selected), evening La Tosca; Friday, March 11, II Trovatore; Saturday, March 12, matinee, Cavallaria Rusticana, and Pagliacci, evening Faust; Monday, March 14, Barber of Seville; Tuesday, March 15, La Boheme, (See also page 7.)