You know you are in for something different when you walk in to the David H. Koch theatre. The curtain is up and you are facing a grandly sized shoji screen. When it opens, you see a blood-red sun dominating the cyclorama and a flotilla of tiny blood red ships in front of the sun. Risers painted as clouds provide a stairway to heaven and ultimately a descent into hell for Cio-Cio San, Madama Butterfly.

The March 19 8 p.m. opening of Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," for the New York City Opera's season, is the performance under consideration, and among my first thoughts after the prelude were that the singers were underpowered and the orchestra, under conductor Steven Mosteller's baton, seemed loud. I soon realized that the problem really was that the orchestra could have been modulated. Steven Harrison in the role of Pinkerton was full of a young man's swagger and vitality, with the world at his feet and fingertips. Quinn Kelsey's NYCO debut as Sharpless was actually very sharp-his resonant, buttery baritone had the right timbre for the older man counseling the younger to be tender, and caring and careful. Of course this all falls on deaf young ears, proving Shaw's maxim about on whom youth is wasted.

Mark Lamos' production is spare and simple, like a Japanese brushstroke painting of a horse-with everything there, but not elaborately detailed. The singers provide the million details of lives woven together, though the surroundings and the story seem deceptively simple. Michael Yeargan's set provides the backdrop for the overwhelming human drama and Constance Hoffman's costumes are flawless. The rich passionate and bloody red of Butterfly's under-kimono dress is glorious in its flow, even as we know that it's a harbinger of what's to come. David Grabarkewitz' staging is beautiful and graceful, as moving pictures flow, tableau, and flow again, much in the way life does.

Robert Wierzel's lighting design varies subtly with mood, time of day, situation and is always, forgive the pun, spot-on. On their wedding night, both Pinkerton and Butterfly are in separate pools of light-hers is a bit cooler, underlining the other-worldliness of a night that changes her forever, even while it pleasantly passes time for him.

So many swirling themes abound in this opera, to the extent that sometimes I wonder if Puccini himself was aware of all of them, front-of-mind. Nationalism and the white man's sense of manifest destiny with foreign angels and foreign devils, all dancing for him, as is his divine right, is what comes through very clearly in Pinkerton's amusement and amazement at his new family-to-be. When Butterfly (Shu-Ying Li) shows her new husband her most precious items, he beams as if at a child. It is only his realization that he has tossed around the spirits of her ancestors that brings him screeching back to reality, though only for a moment.

When he first meets Butterfly, Pinkerton is rightly smitten with her grace, beauty and poise. Li's Butterfly is canny and somewhat worldly, but utterly a young, young woman where it comes to love. Though a geisha, she may never have been with a man prior and her head-over-heels love with this man, who is out of space and out of time for her, is real and unreal. Her energy is so fully female and his, so fully male in that first act, that the black/white yin/yang energy is beyond abundant. But reality comes full force when the oily and unctuous Goro, understatedly well done by Jeffrey Halili, that it's easy to see why he always has so much knowledge and social capital. Goro is chameleon and Cheshire Cat all in one-he will get you what you want, but sometimes chime in about being careful what one asks for, as it may have sharp teeth behind the smile.

There are as many gems in this show as stars in lovers' skies. Eric Jordan's appearance as the Bonze is as the most fierce Kabuki-esque god/villain/avenging angel, and it is an absolute visual and aural delight. The lights become red as he delivers his bitter judgment, drumming Cio-Cio San from her family of birth, even as the culture avers she should do as her husband would want. The ceremonial hanging of the wedding kimono, taking a revered place in the household, yet hanging like an albatross, reminds us all of a loving promise kept by only one of a trothed pair. Shu-Ying Li sings this role with the pathos and heart of a born Cio-Cio San. Her playacting, as she tells a story in Act II, is delightful. By then, of course, she is a worldly woman herself, at 18, whose hopes spring eternal, like a Japanese Penelope awaiting Ulysses' return. And there is the return time and again of Francis Scott Key's "The Star Spangled Banner," which was not yet, at the time "Butterfly" was written, our National Anthem. Puccini is prescient in many, many ways.

When the family falls on hard times in Act II, Cio-Cio San rebuffs the attentions of Yamadori, who is a preening serial monogamist, who swears that she's the one for him. Daesan No plays Yamadori with verve and vital energy, and the right popinjay mix of wounded vanity, when she pricks him again and again and again, with unerring aim.

A star in her own right is Nina Yoshida Nelsen as Suzuki. Nelsen is the right combination of loving, obedient, humble and wise, and the closest, most loyal friend Butterfly has, and all the right chords are struck. Full lambent joy and excoriating pain are shadowed and reflected in Suzuki, even as Butterfly refuses to acknowledge the truth.

I found one of the most visually beautiful and arresting moments to be the vigil kept, ultimately, by Butterfly alone. Suzuki and Sorrow sleep peacefully, while Butterfly ascends the cloud-clad stairs to stare at the stars, with her kimono draped off her shoulders revealing her scarlet soul to the cold, cold moon that was once her goddess, her goodness and her dreams of her life to be. She stands stock still, knowing what she must do to reclaim her honor, even as the sun rises and her feet begin to tread the path of her destiny. There are many visual symbolic moments, but this one continues to linger and swirl.

Li's song, her chemistry with Nelsen and East meeting West, revolving in parallel for a time, now touching only at Sorrow, then parting is striking. Timeless story, accomplished diva, stellar cast--miss this run at your peril, as then Sorrow will be yours.

Remaining shows are March 25 and 27 at 8 p.m., April 2 at 8 p.m., 4 at 1:30 p.m., 8 at 8 p.m., 10 at 1:30 p.m., 16 at 8 p.m., and 18 at 1:30 p.m. Check www.NYCOpera.com, or call 212/870.5570 for more information and to purchase tickets.