'Madama Butterfly' from the Metropolitan Opera

I recently watched this video from the Metopolitan Opera website. You can rent it there to watch on your pc or you can pick up a copy from Amazon.com or if you are real lucky, you local library will have a copy of this performance. I watch and listen to a lot of opera so I can tell you that 'Madama Butterfly' is a difficult opera to execute well because the soprano needs to have a hardy voice, but she also needs to appear to be a waify, 15-year old girl - a very hard thing to pull off. American soprano, Patricia Racette, does the job beautifully with a little help from the costume department. Racette sounds great and doesn't tire out down to the last note of this difficult role. The other singers round out the cast well, and the production, created by Anthony Minghella, includes some wonderful unorthodox puppets. The main puppet used represents Cio Cio San's (That's Butterfly's given name) little boy, whereas generally they just use a real boy. But this puppet is adorable as his masters make him walk around and look at up at her with such a display of trusting emotions. It's quite fantastic. I've seen a few different productions of 'Butterfly' on screen, but none ever worked as well as this one in my opinion. It's just a wonderful show and a great way for anyone to enjoy a Puccini Opera cheaply in the comfort of their own home. If you have never watched an Italian opera before, don't worry, English subtitles are now always provided so you don't have to do any homework, or any thing like that. Just open a bottle of wine and enjoy the show.