Renata Scotto; "Scuoti quella fronda di cilegio"; MADAMA BUTTERFLY; Giacomo Puccini

This channel is the re-establishment of previous channels that have been sadly terminated.
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Renata Scotto--soprano
Anna di Stasio--mezzo-soprano
Sir John Barbirolli--conductor
Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma
1966
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"Renata Scotto (born 24 February 1934) is an Italian soprano and opera director.[1]

Recognized for her sense of style, her musicality, and as a remarkable singer-actress, Scotto is considered one of the preeminent singers of her generation.

Since retiring from the stage as a singer in 2002, she has turned successfully to directing opera as well as teaching in Italy and America, along with academic posts at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Juilliard School in New York.

Renata Scotto was born in Savona, Italy. She made her operatic debut in her home town on Christmas Eve of 1952 at the age of 18 in front of a sold-out house as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata.The next day, she made her 'official' opera debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan as Violetta. Shortly after, she performed in her first Puccini opera, Madama Butterfly, in Savona and was paid twenty-five thousand lire. Both roles would later become closely associated with her name.

In 1953, Scotto auditioned at La Scala for the role of Walter in Catalani's La Wally with Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco. After her audition, one of the judges, the conductor Victor de Sabata, was heard to say, "Forget about the rest." La Wally opened on 7 December 1953 and Scotto was called back for fifteen curtain calls. Tebaldi and Del Monaco each received seven.

Scotto's major breakthrough came in 1957: At the Edinburgh Festival, La Scala performed their production of Bellini's La Sonnambula with Maria Meneghini Callas as Amina. The production was so successful that the company added an unscheduled fifth performance. Callas, who was under contract for four performances, declined to perform in the added performance but allowed the La Scala management, who had announced her for the fifth performance without her consent, to explain her departure from the festival as being due to illness. Scotto, covering the role of Amina, sang the role on 3 September 1957. The performance was a great success, and the 23-year-old Scotto became an international opera star.

During the 1960s she became one of the leading singers in the belcanto revival initiated by Callas during the 1950s. She sang Bellini's Zaira and La straniera, plus Giulietta in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Donizetti's Maria di Rohan, Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (in Italian) and other repertoire rarities. In 1964 she performed with La Scala at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the first opera company tour to the Soviet Union during the Cold War years.

Her American debut was as Mimì in La bohème at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1960, the same year she married violinist Lorenzo Anselmi. The couple have a daughter and a son. On 13 October 1965, Scotto made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly. She went on to sing more than 300 performances in 26 roles at the Met through 1987 and settled to live with her family in nearby Westchester County.

With Luciano Pavarotti she opened the series of Live from the Met telecasts in 1977 with Puccini's La bohème. During the following years she starred in the telecasts of Manon Lescaut, Luisa Miller, Don Carlo, Il trittico, Francesca da Rimini and as Desdemona with Jon Vickers in Verdi's Otello.

For more than 40 years, Scotto performed in operas written by 18 composers and her repertoire included some forty-five roles. She is best known for her performances as Violetta in La traviata, Gilda in Rigoletto, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Mimì (and occasionally Musetta) in La bohème, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Adina in L'elisir d'amore, Liù in Turandot, Nedda in Pagliacci, all three leading soprano roles in Puccini's Il trittico, Adriana Lecouvreur, and Francesca in Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini.

In the late part of her career, Scotto took on the roles of Fedora (Barcelona, 1988), Charlotte in Massenet's Werther, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier (Charleston Spoleto Festival, 1995 and Catania), Kundry in Parsifal (Schwerin, 1995), Elle in La voix humaine (Florence, 1993; Amsterdam and Barcelona, 1996; Torino, 1999), Madame Flora in The Medium (Torino, 1999) and Klytemnestra in Elektra (Baltimore, 2000 and Sevilla, 2002).

In February 2008, Scotto hosted an artists' roundtable during the intermission of the Met broadcast of Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur and in 2009 she returned for another round-table with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez."; Wikipedia (edited)