Sayonara, Nagasake, 1904! Hello, San Francisco, circa 1940, on the eve of Pearl Harbor! Wary of the ham-fisted stereotypes that pervade Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Boston Lyric Opera has invested a whopping three years exploring “authentic storytelling.” Accordingly, the teenage geisha of yesteryear has yielded to a “nightclub performer contributing to the war effort,” besotted not by that callow sex tourist Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton but rather “a young soldier, on the eve of his deployment.” Sounds a lot like Miss Saigon, which, of course, derived from the same source. New triggers for old? —Matthew Gurewitsch