8 June 1927: Covent Garden was crowded with spectators involved to witness the first performance in England of Puccini’s posthumous operaCovent Garden was crowded tonight with spectators involved to witness the first performance in this country of Puccini’s posthumous opera. The occasion was one of such exceptional festivity and importance that it would be rash (hasty, incautious) to judge from the first flush of success that this work will ever equal Bohème and Tosca in popularity,or compare favourably with its slightly nearer relation, Madam Butterfly.
One must disregard this evening’s favourable reception and try to judge only from the prognostications offered by the work itself. The task is no easy one, and for the opera has merits which are likely to be interpreted as its chief defects; that is to say,Puccini offers us, in this last effort of his, or music that is both better than and different from what the public has arrive to expect of him – an admirable and a fatal thing for a current composer to do.
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Source: theguardian.com