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Available for over a year

When Madame Butterfly opened at La Scala, Milan on February 14th 1904 it lasted one night. The audience reaction forced Puccini and his publisher Ricordi to pull the Opera and set about a series of rewrites. But in Milan's Archivio Storico Ricordi is the manuscript of that first performance with all the later markings, crossings out and additions which were to see the work become hugely popular over the years that followed. Frances Fyfield has been allowed to examine the score along with the conductor Julian Smith, the scholar Nigel Simeone and the star of La Scala's revival Maria José Siri. First broadcast on Tales From the Stave, 6 December 2016.