Licia’s Last Butterfly

On Friday, November 26, 1965, I went to a performance of MADAMA BUTTERFLY at the Metropolitan Opera House. On the following day, I had an operatic double-header: a matinee of ELISIR D’AMORE and an evening performance of FAUST. That Saturday marked the last time I ever set foot in the Old Met. The venerable theatre had been marked for demolition, while a New Met was rising at Lincoln Center.

The eight performances I saw at the Old House are very special memories for me. The singers I saw there had become gods and goddesses to me thru their singing on the Texaco Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts; I was now experiencing ‘live‘ the rituals Milton Cross described each week over the airwaves: the house lights going down, the applause greeting the conductor, the great gold curtain being drawn back for the curtain calls. It was like a dream come true.

Licia Albanese’s was one of the first operatic voices I became familiar with. She was one of the singers on the first 2-LP set of opera arias and duets that I owned. She sang Liu on a memorable Met broadcast of TURANDOT in 1962, opposite Nilsson and Corelli. And my parents had taken me to see her as Violetta (her 100th performance of the role) at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera in 1963.

In all honesty, Albanese’s voice was never really among my favorites; it was more her expressive intensity of communication and her endearing persona that I found appealing. But I understood her importance as a singer in the grand tradition, and if her singing of the Violetta and Butterfly that I saw could turn dry and almost ghostly, I can still vividly recall her stage presence and her instinctive if Olde School acting.

What I did not realize as I watched Licia Albanese taking her bows after that 1965 Butterfly was that it was the final time she ever sang the role. After playing Cio-Cio-San some eighty times on that stage, this was to be the last. Like many performances I have experienced, the evening became iconic over time when measured as part of the singer’s career.

I met La Licia after the performance – I was one of a sizeable group of admirers who had waited for her – and she was of course elegantly gowned and coiffed, chattering away to her fans in Italian. She signed my program with a flourish: 

It was a happy crowd of fans and friends, and no mention was made of it being “her last Butterfly”. She did sing one more complete role at The Met: Manon Lescaut; and the following Summer she sang Mimi in LA BOHEME with Barry Morell in a concert presented by The Met at the Newport Festival. 

A few days after the performance, I sent her a fan letter and received this photo in return, along with her calling card:

Licia Albanese – Ancora un passo or via ~ MADAMA BUTTERFLY

There were two further memorable moments related to the Old Met and to MADAMA BUTTERFLY in Albanese’s extraordinary life: at the gala farewell concert that marked the closing of the Old Met on April 16th, 1966, Licia sang the aria “Un bel di” and, during the applause, she knelt to place a kiss on the stage where she had appeared so frequently since her debut in 1940:

Once the demolition of the ‘old yellow brewery’ began, Licia donned her kimono and sang “Un bel di” one last time amid the ruins.

But my connection with the legendary diva was not over. One evening during the first season at the New Met, I saw her among the audience on the Grand Tier during intermission. She was talking with another elegantly-gown lady as I approached them hesitantly. The other woman gave me an encouraging smile, so I took Madame Albanese’s hand and awkwardly told her of having seen her Violetta and Butterfly. She thanked me quietly, but kept hold of my hand. Then she turned to her friend and said, in her charming accent: “It is so wonderful to be remembered! He’s so young, he will tell people about me many years from now.”

Then, some thirty-five years on, I was holding down the fort in the opera room at Tower Records one dreary afternoon when Licia Albanese came in with a companion; the soprano was rather feeble by that point in time, but when I greeted her, she smiled silently. I said to her, “I saw your one hundredth Violetta at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera!” She was silent for a moment, and I thought my remark had not registered. Her friend gave me a look as if to say that Madame’s mind might not be perfectly clear.

“The Zoo!” said the diva firmly. Then she began to roar like a lion and sing little birdcalls and make noises like chattering monkeys. Anyone who has ever attended a performance at the Cincinnati Zoo will know that these sounds were always a continuous obbligato to the opera being performed. We all laughed. And then I bade the two women goodbye, thinking to myself – as I have so often – “What a life I am living!”

Above: Licia Albanese at age 93; she passed away in 2014 at the age of 105. 

~ Oberon