Opera is getting big-time exposure at the CCP this year thanks to the indefatigable effort of the present CCP president Raul Sunico who is succeeding in networking with people and institutions that are opera-friendly.
 
          Truth to tell, staging opera is a noteworthy endeavor but getting the resources to be able to finance it is another story.
 
          After CCP’s successful team up with Korean opera group with La Traviata,  Madama Butterfly is up at the   CCP main theater  next month (June 22-23) this time in association with MusicArtes, Inc.

          This new Puccini revival features Japanese soprano Mako Nishimoto, Mexican tenor Dante Alcalá,  Filipina soprano Camille Lopez Molina and international baritone Andrew Fernando, with Gerard Salonga conducting the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra.


 
          In the early 80s, Madama Butterfly was seen at the CCP with the Cio Cio San of Israeli soprano Atarah  Hazzan (a last-minute replacement for the indisposed Japanese soprano Yasuko Hayashi) and the Pinkerton of  Vincenzo Manno and the Susuki of Joann Grillo.
 
          I don’t recall any exceptional singer in this production but I do remember the ravishing performance of the Philippine Philharmonic under conductor Henry Lewis, ex-husband of mezzo icon Marlyn Horne and both close friends of the late Pavarotti.
 
          In 1994, the Art and Music group of Joseph Uy presented a gem of a Cio Cio San in the person of Japanese soprano Yoko Watanabe who later passed away because of cancer. At that time, she was the best Butterfly in the US and European circuit and when I finally heard her, I thought she was the main highlight of that production.
 


 
           It may be noted that between 1915 and 1920, Japan's best known opera singer, Tamaki Miura, won international fame as Cio Cio San. Her statue along with composer Giacomo Puccini, can be found in the Glover Garden in Nagasaki where the opera is set.
 
           As I look forward to this new Butterfly, it’s just proper that we recall the country’s finest Puccini heroines.
 
          For the record, the first Filipina to sing the title role of Madama Butterfly
was no other than Maestra Isang Tapales who sang the part – not in Manila – but in Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, Italy in April 1924.
 
          In 1925, it was the turn of Maestra Jovita Fuentes (a National Artist for Music) who sang Cio Cio San  in a municipal theater in Piacenza, Italy.


 
          In the late 40s, Maestra Dalisay debuted in the same role at the New York City Opera.
 
          I have not seen a distinguished Filipina Madama Butterfly in recent times but I did know that soprano Eleanor Calbes sang it in Canada  when she was already in her 50s.
 
          Maestra Tapales would have been 112 this year and among her students were tenor Noel Velasco, baritone Gamaliel Viray, singing Joy Virata, among others.


 
          Tapales’s opera credentials include 1047 performance of  Madama Butterfly, more than 300 performances of La Boheme (as Mimi), Pagliacci (as Nedda) and over a hundred engagements of  the little known opera, Iris, by Pietro Mascagni.
 
          La Tapales was the first Filipino to sing at Opera Comique in Paris, followed by her student, Noel Velasco, several decades later. She was also the first Filipino soprano to sing with such opera icons as Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Beniamino Gigli who inherited the crown of Caruso before the electronic age of PlacidoDomingo and Luciano Pavarotti.
 
          The country’s first Butterfly is one of 24 (!) children of Silvestre Tapales, a composer and music teacher and a friend of former first lady Imelda Marcos’s uncle, Justice Norberto Romualdez who also dabbled in composition.
 
          She put up a short-lived opera company in Manila in the 50s with Charito Planas as president and the soprano as music director.
 
          Under Tapales, operas such as Il Trovatore, Cavaleria Rusticana and Pagliacci were staged in Manila with no less than Italian tenor Arrigo Pola (Pavarotti’s first teacher in Modena, Italy) in the lead roles.
 
          When  Japanese soprano  Mako Nishimoto and Mexican tenor Dante Alcalá appear in Madama Butterfly on June 22-23,  I cannot but help recall Maestra Isang Tapales’s opera conquests of Milan. Paris, The Hague and the 100 doves set loose on her farewell performance in Milan’s Teatro del Verme.
 
          (For tickets to June 22-23 performances of Madama Butterfly,  call the CCP Box Office at (02)832.3704 or MusicArtes Inc. at (02)895.8098, (+63918)9085088 and TicketWorld (8919999).

 

 

Munting Nayon News Magazine