The opening night of Washington National Opera's final production of the fall, Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, offers yet another opportunity to wonder why in the world this opera remains so popular with American audiences. Most opera fans, myself included, love this opera because the music, especially for the title character, is some of the most memorable that Puccini penned. However, the libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica tells a story that should inspire disgust. If we look at this tale from an early 21st-century perspective, an American naval officer, B. F. Pinkerton, takes a brief leave from his ship for a pedophile's vacation of sexual tourism in Nagasaki, "marrying" a Japanese teenager. He then abandons her, only to return three years later with his American wife, to take the poor girl's young son back to the United States with them.

Having already been forced by poverty into the life of a geisha, Cio-Cio San (or Madama Butterfly) waits in pitiful faith for her husband to return and, unable to bear her grief, kills herself with the same ceremonial blade her father used to commit seppuku. Just when you thought you could not feel worse about how people in foreign countries perceive the United States, Puccini has his ugly Americans sing "America Forever," accompanied by the strains of the Star-Spangled Banner. You would think that Pinkerton would be more careful about pissing off a Japanese teenage girl, but you have to remember that this is before The Grudge was made, so he couldn't know. Also, having servants who dance around with daggers and carry off children (dancers Krzysztof Baliński, Michał Ciećka, and Tomasz Nerkowski as bare-armed beefcake in samurai skirts) should have been a sign.

The sets by Boris F. Kudlicka in this gorgeous staging by Polish director Mariusz Treliński (last seen in Washington in 2001) are grand and minimalist, with a vast red vista in the first act for the approach of Cio-Cio San's wedding party on boats. In later acts, there are large walls that bear images of Buddha (although Butterfly's mention of the images of her ancestors seems to indicate her religion to be Shinto), including statues in Act III with human hands that rain down cherry blossoms. In the wedding scene, the Bonze (an appropriately indignant Ricardo Lugo) is suspended on a small platform in front of an angry kabuki mask. It's all lush and bigger than life.

As Treliński acknowledges in his Director's Notes, he drew inspiration from Japanese kabuki theater, with its ritualized actions, hand gestures, and body postures, all reproduced in the way the singers move and stand. Other influences, not acknowledged, are the static and color-based stagings of Robert Wilson and the kabuki-inspired films of Akira Kurosawa. Cio-Cio San's mother, played by Mimi Legat as a ghost in white robes and white hair, walking simultaneously hunched over and en pointe, reminded me of the witch in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, a samurai version of Macbeth.

In contrast to how the Post's reviewer sees it, Treliński's staging has hit on the archetypal structure of the work, opera as myth. My only real complaint is the change to the ending, that Pinkerton's final lines ("Butterfly!") take place before the suicide, rather than cries of despair at discovering the body, as indicated in the libretto. The production's visual splendor is certainly worth seeing, especially if you missed its 2001 appearance, but the cast, while perfectly fine, is not exactly star-studded. Xiu Wei Sun was scheduled to sing in the second cast but was asked to step in for an ill Tatiana Borodina, who herself had stepped in for the original Butterfly, Hui He, who reneged on her contract in Washington to take another role at La Scala. Xiu Wei Sun gave a dramatically convincing performance, with a voice that was mostly up to Puccini's many challenges, a 15-year-old with a 50-year-old's dramatic soprano. As Pinkerton, the young tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz was visually right but underpowered, in a role that is wholly unsympathetic and not all that musically interesting.

Fine contributions came from the earthy, rich tone of mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Batton as Suzuki, Butterfly's devoted servant, and baritone Luca Salsi as the American consul, Sharpless. The child supernumerary who played Butterfly's young son, Sorrow (Dolore), was incredibly composed on stage and made the ending of the opera that much more painful. (For his production at the Met, film director Anthony Minghella used a puppet for Butterfly's son, which caused quite a stir.) The orchestra gave a fine, full-throated reading of the score that occasionally overpowered some of the singers, with some uncertain entrances and lack of ensemble probably due to the impassioned but imprecise conducting of director Plácido Domingo.

Performances continue, with two different casts, through November 19. Your best chance of finding a ticket is the November 17 performance, which was recently added. Because of the opera's popularity, reduced-price tickets will likely be scarce. If you want to experience the opera for free, camp out with the expected crowd of 15,000 people to watch the live simulcast on the National Mall's large screen (between Fourth and Seventh Sts. NW) this Sunday (November 12, 2 p.m.).

Photos by Karin Cooper (1) and Juliusz Multarzyński (2)