Giacomo Puccini - Puccini: Madame Butterfly (Audio CD)

This classic recording of Puccini's saddest work catches its two leading protagonists at their most youthful and most ardent. Steber is a soprano sorely missed--she rarely sang badly, in poor taste, or shallowly; if anything is wrong here it's that she sounds a bit too... red-blooded American for Puccini's geisha. Tucker, too, is red-blooded, but his Pinkerton is supposed to be--he is his usually reliable, stentorian, unsubtle self. Rudolf's conducting is no-nonsense, and SONY has remastered the 50-ish year old recording well. Not a first Butterfly for a collection, perhaps, but one with fine, historical value. --Robert Levine

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