City’s first Butterfly returns for 50th-year production
Pride of place in the audience on Saturday’s performance of Madama Butterfly will have to go to Diane Gibson Nelsen. It was she who, 50 years ago, took to the Jubilee stage as Edmonton Opera’s very first Butterfly.
Toronto-born and bred, she had come to Alberta with her baritone husband, Ron, to take over the family farm in Namao.
They were both 24, had met at opera school, and planned to farm in the summer and sing in the winter. Diane auditioned for the role, got it, and Ron also sang in the production.
“There was a wonderful support group,” she remembers. “Tickets ranged from $2 to $5. Students got into the dress rehearsal for 50 cents.”
The funding had all been raised locally (the City of Edmonton contributed $50), and a local car company lent her a car so she could drive from rehearsal to the farm.
What she remembers most fondly was discovering, at the end of the performance, that her parents had been in the audience. They had flown in from Toronto, deliberately keeping their presence secret so it wouldn’t put her off.
She also remembers a moment of panic, after her first long aria. The audience were silent, she says. “I thought they didn’t like me. But actually they were waiting for the orchestral music to finish at the end of the aria before applauding.”
Diane soon turned her attentions after Butterfly to raising a family (two of her children are successful musicians, the third teaches performance techniques), but both she and Ron continued a long association with Edmonton Opera, first in smaller roles, and then in the chorus, “to keep on singing.” She now lives in Toronto.
It will be something of a reunion on Saturday. Also in the audience will be the original Pinkerton, Ermanno Mauro, who went on to a successful international operatic career, and the original Suzuki, Katherine Buchanan.