Puccini: Madama Butterfly

A famous photograph, taken in Chicago after one of only three performances of Madama Butterfly, shows Callas, still in her Japanese costume, angrily snarling at a police officer who had brought her a lawsuit – the stormy diva as she lived and breathed. In contrast, in her recording of the role, as critic John Osborne remarked, we have “in a wonderful way the fifteen-year-old girl before us, and not the great Callas”. The ideal complement to the ingenious interpretation of the figure with her voice is Herbert von Karajan’s conducting: “an extremely sensitive interpretation that reveals more details of the score than anyone has ever heard,” wrote the British journal Gramophones.