Lyric Opera’s “Madama Butterfly”/Photo: Todd Rosenberg

My late sister was an operatic soprano, and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” was her signature role.

That meant that while growing up, I knew this opera inside and out, as its vocal lines resonated regularly throughout our house whenever she would practice. I lost count of how many of her “Butterfly” performances we attended as a family over the years.

Even very young, and long before I became a critic, it seemed obvious to me that “Butterfly” was a Western fable that had little, if anything, to do with Japan.

Though I did not have to be Japanese to figure that out, how differently would I perceive “Butterfly” if I were Japanese?

In a sense, that is what Matthew Ozawa’s multidimensional staging of “Butterfly” that premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2023, but is now being presented at his home company of Lyric Opera where he is chief artistic director, is asking us to do: to see it through a Japanese lens, or at least through a Japanese American lens.

The fit is not comfortable. Nor is sitting through this staging, but that may well be the point.

Act I and Act II have silent prologues that make clear we are not in Japan. We are in the virtual fetish-fantasy world of Pinkerton (tenor Evan LeRoy Johnson in his Lyric debut). Or are we? You have to wonder if this guy is even in the Navy, let alone a lieutenant. Is he daydreaming in his parents’ basement?

Once Pinkerton puts on his virtual reality headset, we enter a chaotic and confused fluorescent pop art world that feels like we have stumbled into an ocular migraine of an intoxicated Peter Max. Bright colors clash, stripes and polka dots collide. Glare, glare everywhere. Oh, and that’s when Puccini’s score begins.

Musically, the entrance of Butterfly (Korean soprano Karah Son, making her Lyric debut) is magic. A beautiful female chorus with a soaring soprano. In this production, the unsavory shapes, colors and movements of the wedding party as it arrives stand in stark contrast to their sweet sonorities. Butterfly, too, is singing as if she is spinning out silk, while visually looking like something out of outer space with initially shrouded large, round Mickey Mouse ears-like hair. I found this constant tension between awkward visuals and dulcet tones to be not only uncomfortable, but grating.

Lyric Opera’s “Madama Butterfly,” with Karah Son and Nozomi Kato/Photo: Todd Rosenberg

As we head into Act II, surprise. Pinkerton is not only virtually imagining it all, he is inserted into his own fantasy: watching himself watching the interplay between Butterfly and her servant Suzuki (Japanese mezzo-soprano Nozomi Kato in her Lyric debut).

This breaks down the fourth wall quite distractingly. Is Pinkerton unreal to them? Is anything real? More to the point, are these unreal characters feeling anything? Do we as the audience feel anything watching them?

Thanks to Puccini and to his sumptuous score, surprisingly—and thankfully—we do.

I am reminded of a time I brought a colleague who had worked with Hal Prince as a production assistant on Broadway to see what was likely Prince’s dozenth production of “Butterfly” at Lyric years ago. “This is so static, it’s insufferable,” was his assessment. Pretty sure no one is claiming that now.

Through April 12 at the Lyric Opera House, 20 North Wacker. Tickets available at lyricopera.org.