s.
B. H. Elkin, by the Savage Opera Company, which came to the Garden
Theatre, New York, after a trial season in Washington, on November 12,
1906. It had a run of nearly three months before it reached the
Metropolitan Opera House, on February 11, 1907. Mr. Walter Rothwell
conducted the English performance, in which there were several changes
of casts, the original Butterfly being Elza Szamozy (a Hungarian
singer); Suzuki, Harriet Behne; Pinkerton, Joseph F. Sheehan, and
Sharpless, Winifred Goff. Arturo Vigna conducted the first Italian
performance at the Metropolitan, with Geraldine Farrar as Butterfly,
Louise Homer as Suzuki, Caruso as Pinkerton, Scotti as Sharpless, and
Albert Reiss as Goro.]

So complete was the fiasco that in his anxiety to withdraw the work
Signer Puccini is said to have offered to reimburse the management of
the theatre for the expenditures entailed by the production. Failures
of this kind are frequently inexplicable, but it is possible that the
unconventional character of the story and the insensibility of the
Italians to national musical color other than their own, had a great
deal to do with it in this case. Whatever the cause, the popular
attitude toward the opera was displayed in the manner peculiar to
Italy, the discontented majority whistling, shrilling on house keys,
grunting, roaring, bellowing, and laughing in the good old-fashioned
manner which might be set down as possessed of some virtuous merit if
reserved for obviously stupid creations.

"The Pall Mall Gazette" reported that at the time the composer told a
friend that on this fateful first night he was shut up in a small room
behind the scenes, where he could hear nothing of what was going on on
the stage or in the audience-room. On a similar occasion, nearly a
century before, when "The Barber of Seville" scored an equally
monumental failure, Rossini, in the conductor's chair, faced the mob,
shrugged his shoulders, and clapped his hands to show his contempt for
his judges, then went home and composedly to bed. Puccini, though he
could not see the discomfiture of his opera, was not permitted to
remain in ignorance of it. His son and his friends brought him the
news. His collaborator, Giacosa, rushed into the room with dishevelled
hair and staring eyes, crying: "I have suffered the passion of death!"
while Signorina Storchio burst into such a flood of tears and sobs that
it was feared she would be ill. Puccini was cut to the heart,