Autograph musical quotation from the composer's opera, Madama Butterfly, signed in full
3 measures of the main dramatic theme sung by Butterfly in Act I ("d'amor, d'amor venni alle soglie").
Identified as "Butterfly" at head in Puccini's autograph, signed in full, and dated Sept. 1920. On an album leaf 210 x 132 mm.
Slightly browned from previous matting; very minor creasing overall and with central vertical crease.
Madama Butterfly, to a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after David Belasco’s play Madame Butterfly, itself based on John Luther Long’s short story, which in turn was based partly on Pierre Loti’s tale Madame Chrysanthème, was first performed in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala on 17 February 1904 and in a revised version in Brescia at the Teatro Grande on 28 May of that same year.
"Puccini was seized with the subject after seeing Belasco’s play performed in London in June 1900, and he immediately applied to Belasco for the rights. ... No other Puccini opera testifies more strongly to his ability to discern the possibilities for music drama. ... By making use of at least seven Japanese folk melodies the composer both evoked the Far Eastern ambience and enlarged his musical vocabulary, since every one of them is assimilated into his own personal and by now highly sophisticated style. The scale of musical thought is likewise grander than ever before." Julian Budden in Grove Music Online
"This opera, Puccini's favourite, was, as is well known, a complete failure at its first performance and is in the front rank of fatal operatic first nights. Not only was it hurriedly withdrawn after the first night but publication of the first edition was stopped and copies immediately withdrawn from sale, thus ensuring its considerable rarity. The work was originally conceived in three acts but the original version was produced and published in two. Puccini set to work immediately after its failure on a heavy revision, and owing to the severe criticism expressed at the length of the second act split it into two parts. The revised version was first performed with an almost complete change of cast (Rosino Storchio being replaced by Salomea Krusceniski, but Zenatello and De Luca still remaining, with Campanini conducting) little more than three months later, when it received a far warmer welcome. This second version was published about the same time." Hopkinson, p. 24.
Item #39372
Price: $2,800.00 other currencies