Puccini and the diva from County Mayo
Anne Chambers
‘You cannot speak of Puccini from an international point of view without reference to Margherita Sheridan who in my opinion…is one of the greatest interpreters of Puccini’s work.’ - Dott. Giorgio Gualerzi, Milan 1989
In this, the 100th anniversary year of the death of the famous Italian composer and her anniversary on April 16, the words of one of Italy’s most eminent operatic critics above confirmed the composer’s own tribute to Margaret Burke Sheridan who, as Puccini’s daughter also revealed, considered the Castlebar-born diva ‘the outstanding Butterfly of all time’.
‘Discovered’ by Guglielmo Marconi while singing at a fashionable soiree in London, the famous inventor subsequently brought Sheridan to Italy to pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer. A dramatic and critically acclaimed debut as Mimi in La Boheme at the Rome opera house in February 1918 led her to the Dal Verme Theatre in Milan to take on the role of Madama Butterfly.
Drawn by the reviews, Puccini came to hear this ‘foreign’ Butterfly whose performance he described as being ‘full of charismatic intensity and childlike appeal’, and he decided to coach her for the title role in his opera Manon Lescaut.
For her debut in the prestigious carnival season at Rimini, Puccini presented Sheridan with a magnificent gold and blue silk gown for Act 2. He came to hear her later performance at Cento, afterwards driving in triumph with her in an open carriage through the town.
The bronze bust statue which now adorns a stairway wall in the National Concert Hall was presented to her by the San Carlo Opera House in Naples in 1921 and bears the inscription ‘A Margherita Sheridan, Butterfly Insuperabile.’
“She was an unparalled interpreter of the music of Puccini,” conducter Vincenzo Bellizza recorded. “The humanity of his characters and the lyricism of his music found a mysterious echo in her.”
Sheridan was subsequently chosen to make the very first electrical recording (HMV) of the full Madama Butterfly. Following Puccini’s death in 1924, she was in demand for the many commemorative performances of the composer’s work throughout Italy.
During the course of my travels and research for her biography throughout Italy, where from 1918 to 1931 Sheridan became one of the leading operatic stars of the period, I met and interviewed many from the world of opera who knew or remembered her, both personally and professionally.
An interview with the famous soprano, Renata Tebaldi, was indicative of the impact made by this Castlebar-born soprano on Italian opera, and particularly on the works of Puccini.
As Tebaldi recounted, it was to Sheridan’s Puccini recordings, then considered definitive, which she personally studied during the course of her own operatic training and, as she further noted: “Sheridan was a superb actress, combining great artistry with remarkable technique.”
Something that Giacomo Puccini himself had previously discovered and applauded five decades earlier but, sadly, in this his centenary year, seems likely to be ignored by music authorities here in her native country.
- Anne Chambers is author of La Sheridan: Adorable Diva (1889-1958)