Puccini’s `Butterfly’ enthralls MCA crowd

I knew he was going to leave her.

I knew he was going break her heart.

I knew she would kill herself.

So why did I go see “Madama Butterfly,” Giacomo Puccini’s tragic opera about the heart-stopping pain of a young Japanese girl done wrong by an American sailor? Even the moments of joy resonated with bitterness because I knew what was ahead and it was unbearable, unspeakable, unthinkable.

If you’ve ever been left bereft of love — or simply left for no good reason — then you know what I mean. As you watched the opera, you, too, probably dropped your head in wincing recognition of the girl’s plight.

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Poor, dear Butterfly, your heart whispered. Please, let it end differently this time.

Of course, it never does end differently and Saturday, when the New York City Opera National Company transported “Madama Butterfly” to the Maine Center for the Arts, a sold-out audience listened breathlessly and sat motionless as Butterfly got her wings clipped by love.

It wasn’t just the story line that kept us all glued to the action and hanging on every bewitching note. It was the exquisite talent and tact of the company — Patrick Denniston as the self-centered Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, Zheng Cao as the devoted maid Suzuki, Robert Perry as the upright consul Sharpless, and little Kailip Boonrai as the sweet boy Sorrow.

And, of course, there was Oksana Krovytska as Butterfly. She brought grace and innocence and power and heroism to the role. She made you feel each of her dainty emotions, each of her terrible blows. I even felt ashamed to be American because Pinkerton treated her so thoughtlessly. I kept wanting to scream, “Fly, Butterfly!” But I knew that she was locked into the plot of the 100-year-old opera.

Plus I wouldn’t have dared to be the one person making noise in an otherwise rapt concert hall. So I sat there, chomping at the bit because it was all so horrible and frustrating.

And glorious.

And that’s why I was there. In fact, we were all there because Butterfly’s agony was our ecstasy. We were there to hear the music of love’s joy and tragedy, to purge ourselves of love’s dire inconveniences (most of which are probably so minor compared to Butterfly’s).

More than any other event that goes on at the Maine Center, opera brings in the crowds. It sells out the theater. It transports us to Japan in the middle of a blasting Maine winter. In the loveliest of forms, it makes our hearts throb with ideals.

When the audience stood for the standing ovation that was so well earned by the lucid, incisive, easy singers — as well as by conductor Joseph Colaneri and his orchestral musicians — I stood, too — my heart both broken and sated.