taking flight; Anthony Minghella's lush production of Madama Butterfly ushers in a new era at the Met.

Byline: Adam Green

In recent decades, opening nights at the Metropolitan Opera have become what the Met's new general manager Peter Gelb calls "mixed-bag galas"-dinner-and-a-show combos of operatic favorites, with all the trimmings. But Gelb wanted to kick off his tenure with something that reflected his plan to reinvigorate the venerable institution. "Opera was meant to be popular musical theater," he says. "My job is to return it to its place in mainstream culture." And so this month the Met launches its 124th season with its first opening-night premiere of a new production in 20 years, the English film director Anthony Minghella's elegantly conceived staging of Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Minghella, whose movies include The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, is known for his fluid storytelling and lush, cinematic vision. He first staged Butterfly in London for the English National Opera last year (it won an Olivier Award). Directing Puccini's durable 1904 weeper-about a geisha in turn-of-the-century Japan and the American naval lieutenant who done her wrong-allowed him to bring together his passions for the theater (he started his career as a playwright), Japanese culture, and what he calls "the music of my childhood." It also allowed him to collaborate with his wife, the Hong Kong-born choreographer Carolyn Choa.

Minghella chose to tell the story in purely theatrical terms-"restraining the canvas and leaving spaces for the audience to fill in"-though along the way he discovered that some film techniques can be translated to the stage. "If you start with blackness and add a single light to illuminate someone's face, you make a little close-up," Minghella says. "If you put ten lights on, you're in a wide shot." His goal, he says, was not to burden the opera with conceptual gimmicks ("I had no plans to reset it in fifties Moscow or the Bronx in ...