“It appears that 12.5 million Italians watched the liver relay of the original version of Madam Butterfly from La Scala,” claims Norman Lebrecht, which is perfectly accurate except that there was no organ meat involved in the telecast, and it was seen by 2.6 million Italians, not 12.5 million. Oh, and one other factoid escaped the notoriously slipshod “journalist’s” attention. 

La Scala was very clever indeed to obtain the services of Tracy Turnblad to sing the title role in this production.