How Solomiya Krushelnytska saved the opera “Madame Butterfly” and the career of its author Giacomo Puccini

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These days, thousands of fans of Giacomo Puccini’s work come from all over the world to the Italian Torre del Lago. There, on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli near the maestro’s villa, which now houses his museum, the annual Puccini festival begins on July 14 at the Teatro dei Quattromila. The most famous works of the composer will be performed, among which one of the most popular is “Madame Butterfly”. For more than 100 years, this opera has been performed on the best stages of several continents. However, global triumph was preceded by failure. The premiere of “Madame Butterfly” in Milan’s La Scala theater was booed. Puccini was devastated and certain that this was the end. For UP.Zhyttia, journalist and researcher Anna Lodigina tells how Ukrainian opera singer Solomiya Krushelnytskyi managed to save not only the composer’s career, but also his beloved work. This text is also full of sketches of the assertion of colonialism, which Western Europe is now trying to overcome. “It was a terrible evening. The failure deeply affected me, because it was completely unexpected,” Giacomo Puccini will recall the fatal premiere a few years later. – “In the morning, newspaper reporters ran under my windows near La Scala, shouting: “Fiasco, maestro Puccini!” For two weeks I did not want to leave the house. It was shameful.” The composer was not accustomed to failures and frantic criticism, which was written eloquently in the newspapers after the showing of his “Madame Butterfly”. The opera, the work on which lasted three years, the opera that he loved and in the triumph of which he was sure. But the musical-dramatic story of the tragic love of the young Japanese woman Cho-Cho-san to the lieutenant of the American fleet Pinkerton, did not captivate the discerning viewer from the first time. In the photo – Giacomo Puccini. Photo: Getty images At that time, Puccini was at the peak of his creative flourishing, his operas “Manon Lescaut”, “Bohème”, “Tosca” were successfully performed on European stages, which will later become part of the fund of world opera classics. But the evening of February 17, 1904 seemed to erase all the achievements of the maestro. He was sure that this would be the end of his career and he would not be able to write a single note, shutting himself up in his house in Torre del Lago. So what was wrong with “Madame Butterfly”? Read also: The Mariupol Chamber Philharmonic opened its season in Kyiv – the orchestra members received a standing ovation At the time the opera was written, the European fashion for the Middle and Far East had dominated art for about a century. The audience was fascinated by the color of unexplored lands – from Ancient Egypt and Morocco to China and Japan. Solomiya Krushelnytska played in the opera “Madame Butterfly”. Photo: Courtesy of the Solomiya Krushelnytska Memorial Museum of Music It was possible to touch this “exotic” through art – painting, architecture, theater and music. But this opal culture of the East was superficial. Some artists had never even been to North Africa, but were not ashamed to paint fantasy paintings on a pseudo-Arabic theme. And even if they were, they were not thoroughly contemplated. A vivid example of this is the canvas of the French artist Eugène Delacroix, who depicted a Moroccan Jew as a Muslim Arab. Painting by Eugène Delacroix. Photo: wikimedia.org This fascination with the East in Europe was called “Orientalism”, art critics call it racist, because the works clearly contrasted the dominant culture of white Europeans with the unknown and strange world of “others”, which was also reflected in the music. Poster of the opera “Madame Butterfly”. Photo: Courtesy of the Solomiya Krushelnytska Memorial Museum of Music “For a long time, the opera was something like an “impressive show” for listeners. That’s why exotic plots, impressive scenery, beautiful costumes, dances and even animals on stage contributed to the delight of the audience,” says musicologist Stefania Oliynyk . “Orientalism in music flourished most during the period of Romanticism in the 19th century, where “exoticism” was used not just as an external attribute of the story canvas or scenography. Composers, in particular, Puccini, used musical motifs, melodies and rhythms, specific tools of the culture they were trying to to convey in order to “paint” the oriental flavor with music”. According to the expert, this greatly enriched the orchestral sound, harmonic and harmonic thinking, the musical language of European culture and opera art. Rosina Storchio during the first premiere of G. Puccini’s opera “Madame Butterfly” on February 17, 1904. Photo: Facebook page dedicated to Krushelnytska The idea to create Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” arose after watching the play by the American playwright and director David Belasco in London. The basis of the opera was the story of John Luther Long, who himself had never been to Japan and reproduced in the work the observations of his sister Jenny during her missionary journey with her husband to the land of the morning sun. Puccini was so impressed by the tragic love story of a Japanese geisha that he immediately offered the playwright to write an opera based on this drama. And three years of painstaking work began. “It is known that Puccini studied Japanese culture while writing the opera, consulted, in particular, with the wife of the Japanese ambassador to Italy,” says musicologist Stefania Oliynyk. Finished writing Puccini’s opera in bed, recovering from a broken hip in a car accident. The composer was obsessed with the new work and believed that it would become his best work. So he chooses the best theater in Italy – La Scala – for the premiere, and the brightest performers for all the roles, the main one of them was performed by the Italian Rosina Storchio. Solomiya Krushelnytska in the role of Brunhilda in the tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung” by R. Wagner. Photo: Facebook page dedicated to Krushelnytska Even during the work, friends told the composer that the opera needed to be refined, as well as somewhat overloaded and drawn out. But Puccini did not pay attention to anything. And complete confidence in success was shattered already during the first act at the premiere. The public protested and clamored. The lynching continued in the second act. It ended with the opera being booed. The maestro was a complete fiasco. Friends and colleagues persuaded Puccini not to throw his finished product at the hands of critics, but to refine and present an updated version. Every day, the music publisher Tito Ricordi came to the composer’s villa, who encouraged to speed up the “treatment” of “Madame Butterfly”. Colomiya Krushelnytska in the role of Madame Butterfly. Photo: Facebook page dedicated to Krushelnytska Finally, Puccini agreed. First, he changed the dramaturgy, remaking the two-act structure (the second act in the first edition of the opera lasted over an hour and a half!), into a three-act one. And for the main part, he invited a singer who distinguished herself on the main stages of the world not only with her voice, but also with her acting skills – the Ukrainian Solomiya Krushelnytska. Puccini was already familiar with Solomia. In particular, she made her debut on the Italian stage in the maestro’s opera “Manon Lescaut” in Cremona. Krushelnytska’s sister Olena, who was present at those rehearsals, recalled how the Puccini family treated them very cordially, they went for walks together and their acquaintance gradually turned into friendship. “Like any ambitious composer, he followed her from that time and saw how Krushelnytska was singled out in the reviews. Also, I am inclined to the fact that the outstanding conductor Arturo Toscanini advised her to play the role of Cho-Cho-San. He had also worked with her before and was inclined in front of her talent, as evidenced in particular by his letters to her,” says Iryna Kryvoruchka, the chief custodian of the Krushelnytska Museum’s funds. Production of “Madame Butterfly” by Manu Lalli. Photo: Giorgio Andreuccetti Teatro Grande in Brescia was chosen for the revival of “Butterfly”. The re-premier was planned already a few months after the failure – on May 29, the king of Italy Vittorio Emanuele III himself was supposed to visit it, since Puccini dedicated the work to his wife, Queen Elena. However, since she was under hope, she could not come in person. Solomia prepared carefully, honing not only the vocal parts, but also working on the image of Cho-Cho-San: her movements and posture, so that no one doubts that a real Japanese woman is standing on the stage. On the days of performances, Krushelnytska did not receive visitors, did not answer calls, but was only thinking about the image in which she had to appear in front of the audience in the evening. It was the same this time. Almost all of Brescia went to the theater, the public came even from Milan to witness either Puccini’s final fiasco or his triumph over the envious. Everyone is waiting. Cleofonte Campanini appeared behind the conductor’s console. The curtain rose – and the bright scenery of Japan appeared before the audience. The magic did not start from the first seconds. Almost after each performed part, the audience called Giacomo Puccini to bow or asked to repeat the performed passages for an encore – the finale of the duet “Magnificent Night”, Butterfly’s romance “Hear, the longed-for day will come” and the final intermezzo of the orchestra’s second act. The conductor and the lead soloist are called to the ramp several times, and later in the press they give the most magnificent epithets about her unsurpassed singing and acting skills. Audience at the Giacomo Puccini Festival. Photo: teatro.it “Solomia Krushelnytska, who impressed everyone with the power of drama and brilliant acting talent, was a real triumphant of the performance,” – wrote the famous Italian musicologist Rinaldo Cortopassi. It was the triumph that Giacomo Puccini so longed for and counted on. Musicologists consider it no exaggeration to say that the maestro owed his success to Krushelnytskyi. Yes, he finished the opera, but it was she who managed to convincingly transform herself into a Japanese girl, seduced and then abandoned by an American lieutenant, tragically depict the tenderness of love, despair and courage at the same time, which led to her suicide in such a way that the audience believed in this story and was moved by it . Thus, the Ukrainian woman set the “standard” performance of the Cho-Cho-San party. “The opera was doomed to oblivion, but Krushelnytska, enamored with the role of a gentle Japanese woman, resurrected this work. If all composers had artists with such talent as Solomiya Krushelnytska for their operas, surely a large number of works, even of dubious value, would not have known failure.” , – wrote the Lisbon publication Diario illustrado after another performance. Solomiya Krushelnytska at Puccini’s dacha. Photo: Courtesy of Solomia Krushelnytska’s Music Memorial Museum Emboldened by Puccini’s success, Krushelnytska signed her portrait: “The most beautiful and charming Butterfly.” And in the office above his desk in Torre del Lago, there was always one single photo, and it was a photo of Solomiya Krushelnytska, as a memory of the revival of his opera “Madame Butterfly” by a genius artist. Her Ukrainian performed about 100 times in theaters of three continents – from Italy and Portugal to Egypt and Argentina. From the day of the “Butterfly” revival, Krushelnytska was connected with the maestro not only by opera, but also by long-term friendship. “Perhaps other Butterflies will appear on our stages over time, but just as it is impossible to separate Othello from Francesco Tamagno, Massenet’s Manon from the Garalli couple, La Traviata from Gemma Bellincioni, Puccini’s La Bohème from Giuseppe Borgatti, each the next time we have to listen to other singers in “Madame Butterfly”, the unforgettable figure of Krushelnytska will immediately appear before our eyes, and all the others will seem like her pale shadow”, – prophetically wrote in 1904, Il Corriere.

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