Music: 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...