West Virginia's Butterfly

Since the days of Geraldine Farrar, Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera Company has never had a singer halfway capable of impersonating a 15-year-old Japanese girl simply and pathetically in love.

There have been experienced sure-voiced sopranos who have shown real feeling for Puccini's curving melodies. But as figures on the stage they have created little or no illusion. Last week Susanne Fisher of Sutton, W. Va., made her formal U. S. opera debut. Though hers was not an amazing voice, she did manage to be the most appealing, lifelike Madame Butterfly that the Metropolitan has presented in 14 years.

Neighbors in West Virginia knew Susanne Fisher as a plain, everyday child, daughter of self-respecting Methodists, who spent most of her time on her grandfather's farm six miles out of Sutton. As a matter of course she was taught to sew, fry chicken, make hot bread and pies. She was no prodigy. Practicing irked her. But she was so naturally musical, showed such talent for the piano that when time came for her to go off to school she was sent to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. There she discovered the voice that won her successive scholarships from the Juilliard Musical Foundation, months of sound study in Germany, engagements at the Berlin Staatsoper and at the Paris Opéra-Comique. New Yorkers saw her last week as a slender, graceful young woman of 32 who had so thoroughly absorbed the role that there was scarcely a detail left unfinished. She could be fluttery and childlike without seeming foolish. She could be wistful and shy and still suggest a certain brave dig nity. Her Un bel di vedremo was perfectly patterned to describe Butterfly's faith in Lieutenant Pinkerton's return, her defiant refusal to believe that he could have for gotten her. Other Butterflies have sung the aria with greater flourish, built it up to a more flagrant climax. Susanne Fisher's voice, though not powerful, is true, clear, delicately expressive. She uses it with discriminating taste and intelligence. To prepare for a role she plays through the entire opera score a dozen times be fore she sings a note. Such painstaking study had its effect last week. Rarely on the Metropolitan stage has a young debutante performed with such quiet assurance.

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