Solomiya Krushelnytska

A Ukrainian soprano, later Italian by marriage, who sang the Butterfly that rescued the opera. She studied at Lviv and made her debut there in 1892, continuing in Milan with Fausta Crespi, and sang mostly in Russia until a success at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples in 1903 opened the Italian houses to her. Three months after the La Scala fiasco she took Cio-Cio-San in the revised Madama Butterfly at Brescia, and Puccini gave her his portrait inscribed to the most beautiful and charming Butterfly. She later sang Strauss's Salome and Elektra, and retired in 1925.