Those new to Ferruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto might have wondered about his quasi-symphonic concept, a work of Mahlerian proportions that Benjamin Grosvenor considers to be a “kind of operatic ...

Unlike many of his forebears in the nineteenth century, he did not adapt the version of the story by Goethe but, instead, returned to the older tradition of the story as found in the puppet plays.

Conductor John Fiore’s own performing version restores music and dramatic detail absent from the standard Madama Butterfly, with Karen Chia-Ling Ho a commanding Cio-Cio-San.