By Darrell Laurant

Published: April 27, 2008

It was nearly two and a half hours into the San Francisco Opera Company’s filmed production of “Madame Butterfly” one night earlier this month, and still no fat lady.

Which was something of a concern, since, as everyone knows, the opera is never over until the fat lady sings. But not even featured performer Patricia Racette fit that description, although she was a bit too robust to be thought of as “my little butterfly,” as she was referred to by her male co-star.

For that matter, she didn’t look at all Japanese.

No problem. Opera, it seems to me, is all about taking unreality and embracing it.

It’s unreal, for instance, for people to communicate only in song. Indeed, that would be scary in real life, as anyone who has ever witnessed bar room karaoke could attest.

In opera, you expect it.

When I heard that some local opera buffs were bringing Don Giovanni and Madame Butterfly to the Carmike Theater earlier this month, the thought occurred to me that I had never seen and heard a classic Italian opera in its entirety.

Maybe part of that was because of my Dad. Back when I was a teenager — driven by the primal need, like all teenagers, to disassociate myself from my parents’ music — he tended to listen to Italian opera and hardcore country music, often alternating the two on his record player. It was a strange combination, and to this day I can’t hear a song by Ernest Tubb or George Jones without flashing back to Rigoletto.

Nevertheless, I’m an adult now, so I decided I’d give Puccini another chance.

And my wife Gail and I had excellent seats for a Monday night showing of Madame Butterfly. In fact, we could have had any seat in the house, because we were the only people in the audience.

This was, I knew, no reflection on the appetite for opera in Lynchburg. The Opera on the James’ most recent production, a performance of La Boheme, sold out the Academy of Fine Arts’ Warehouse Theater.

Yet this particular night was dismal and drizzling and, after all, a Monday. So it was just me, Gail and the Madame Butterfly cast.

Fortunately, the film had subtitles, since the only Italian I know comes from restaurant menus and “The Sopranos.”

The vast resources of the American cinema seemed wasted on Madame Butterfly, since it’s not a production that requires much in the way of special effects. Except for the scene where Cio-Cio-San sits waiting in vain for her husband, Naval officer B.F. Pinkerton (Brandon Jovanovich) to embark from a silhouette of an American warship projected on a wall, the small cast doesn’t do a lot of moving around.

Here’s the plot: A marriage is arranged between Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San. There’s a wedding. The local religious leader disapproves. Pinkerton goes back to America. Cio-Cio-San waits in vain for his return. Finally, he shows up, but with a new wife. Cio-Cio-San stabs herself.

This is intense, but could probably have been dispensed with in the time frame of, say, a CSI Miami episode. Instead, it lasts almost three hours.

The vocal range of the singers was breathtaking, though. And while the suicide scene was obviously fake, by then I didn’t care.

“I like for the audience to be an emotional wreck when we’re finished,” Racette said before the performance started.

At the end, I remained unwrecked. On the other hand, I did feel like a better person.