“Enter Peter Kazaras. The company stalwart is a director with a penchant for surprising, even outrageous, interpretations of familiar operas. After a Midsummer Night’s Dream set in an English boarding school and an Enfant et les sortilèges with its action transferred to a subway station, I was unsure what to expect from his take on Butterfly.

But Kazaras never does anything eccentric for the sake of being outrageous: he does it to illuminate important aspects of an opera that we might otherwise never have thought of. I had certainly never imagined that what Madama Butterfly needs is restraint. Kazaras had the wit to come to that conclusion. There is nothing remotely eccentric about his production, which unfolds with moving clarity and grace on simple but handsome sets and costumes originally designed by Susan Benson for the Canadian Opera Company. Kazaras pointedly avoided literalness: when Butterfly told Suzuki to pick flowers, it took only about five seconds for the latter to go offstage and return with massive bouquets obviously straight from the florist’s shop—and the effect was entirely charming.”