MUSIC / CHRIS PASLES : Floating Closer to Real Thing in ‘Butterfly’ : Japanese soprano Yoko Watanabe will sing Cio-Cio San for Opera Pacific at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Opera has always been an art of illusion. One tends to overlook that the hefty soprano is supposed to be dying of consumption even though she sings for 20 minutes.

One disregards the fallen arches and middle-aged paunch of the tenor who is about to lead an army against his country’s enemies, as long as his voice soars.

One pretends that the big-boned Caucasian singer is actually the delicate Japanese teen-age geisha, Cio-Cio San, in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” provided she can break your heart.

Still, when an authentic Japanese soprano comes along, so do the offers.

They often come too soon. “My teacher told me you had to wait until you were 30 to sing ‘Butterfly’ because of the danger to the voice,” says Yoko Watanabe, 35, who will sing--what else?--Cio-Cio San for Opera Pacific starting Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. (Watanabe will alternate with Elizabeth Hynes through Jan. 20, a date that has been added because of ticket demand.)

In any case, she says, “my Butterfly is universal. . . . She could be an American. If she had lived 100 years ago and had lost her husband, I think many women would have been desperate and kill themselves.

“Now, no,” she adds with a laugh.

Seen in Los Angeles in 1984 as Liu in Puccini’s “Turandot” with the Royal Opera of London, Watanabe made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1986, covering for Renata Scotto as Butterfly.

Watanabe, an only child, grew up in Fukuoka on Kyusho, the southernmost island of Japan. “It was very difficult to see opera there,” she recalls. “There wasn’t much culture.”

She heard her first opera--a local production of “Butterfly”--when she was 16, and it knocked her out. “I decided I had to sing Butterfly, so I went to (the star’s) dressing room, knocked, and said, ‘Teach me!’ She said, ‘Tomorrow you come back and I will listen to your voice. . . .’

“My parents at first were opposed to my being a singer because my father is a doctor and his dream for me was to be a doctor, too. . . . Now it’s OK. But for three years, when I was studying with my teacher in Fukuoka, it was terrible.”

The training itself was long and difficult. “We have no r (sound),” she notes. “I studied for one year (just) for the r . Otherwise, I couldn’t sing (Italian opera). Then I went to Tokyo to study. I was 18.” She studied there for the next four years, never performing. “Twenty-two is too young to sing on stage,” she says.

When she went on to study at the school of La Scala in Milan, she received a big shock--she was told she had been singing the wrong repertory for her kind of voice.

“When I was in Japan, I was a dramatic soprano because in Japan if a singer has a little more volume than ordinary, you are a dramatic soprano. When I did an audition for the school of La Scala, I went on stage and sang ‘Ritorna vincitor!’ from ‘Aida.’ The teacher told me, ‘OK, you have a voice. You can come to school here. But you have to study ‘La Boheme.’

“I was angry, and one day I cried because my dream was to be a dramatic soprano. Then I heard other students’ voices in my class. ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘I’m not a dramatic soprano.’ I cannot sing loud here. I have to change.”

She began to study lighter repertory. “So I have to say to my teacher in Milano, thank you very much.”

The Japanese system, Watanabe realized, tends to destroy the voices of young singers. “In Japan, there are many singers who after one year, two years, stop their careers because they’ve ruined their voices.” Watanabe now focuses on Italian and French lyric repertory.

She laughs when asked if she has had to work with a conductor she didn’t like. “That happens,” she says. “It’s terrible. For me, it’s an inferno.

“It’s not only the technique of the conductor. I have to be in eye contact on the stage with the maestro so we can create the music together. But some conductors keep their eyes only on the score. That is very difficult.”

She is very happy, though, to be working in Costa Mesa with conductor John Mauceri. For one thing, “my career began with him. In ‘84, I sang Butterfly with him in Manchester, England, with Covent Garden. From this Butterfly my career began. We (also) worked together last year in Monte Carlo in Monaco. ‘Butterfly’ again.” She also has worked before with Jonathan Welch, who will sing opposite her in Costa Mesa, in the role of Pinkerton.

Her first Pinkerton, Renato Grimaldi, eventually became her husband. They live together in Milan. “He abandoned his career for me because it’s very difficult to have two singers in one family. . . . He coaches me. He is my worst critic. He complains about everything from vocalization to stage presence, everything. As singers, we need others’ ears. After a performance, everyone says, ‘Bravo, bravo.’ It’s OK to hear ‘bravo,’ but you have to learn, too.”

Does she pay attention to critics, as well?

“I would be lying if I didn’t say yes.”

Watanabe prefers singing opera to offering concert recitals because “opera is complete. When I have to make a concert, I hate it. It’s terrible because it’s very difficult to enter into the personality of aria. In opera, it’s makeup, it’s costume, it’s Suzuki.”

She admits to getting “very nervous” before going on stage but says the nervousness vanishes when she starts to sing. “The biggest medicine for the nerves is getting inside of the character. Then I forget about myself.”

Yoko Watanabe will alternate with Elizabeth Hynes in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” for Opera Pacific at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Watanabe will sing opposite Jonathan Welch on Saturday and Jan. 17 and 19 at 8 p.m. Hynes will sing opposite Hans Gregory Ashbaker on Sunday and Jan. 20 at 2 p.m. and Jan. 18 at 8 p.m. John Mauceri will conduct all performances. Tickets: $20 to $70. Information: (714) 556-2787.