Puccini: Madama Butterfly

In the 1980s, conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli was the opera world's most talked about revisionist. Some hailed him for peeling off layers of tradition and diagnosing the neurotic opera characters like a Freudian analysis. Others thought he was just being neurotic himself. Surely, this Butterfly is dramatic, musical theater of the highest order though often extremely heavy handed: The Act I quotations of the "Star-Spangled Banner" are underscored to a fare thee well. Singers give passionate, committed performances, Mirella Freni being her vocally generous self and Carreras, in his last recording before falling ill with leukemia, sounding surprisingly secure and robust. --David Patrick Stearns