O.C. OPERA REVIEW : A Horse Opera at Center : The Music Center Opera of Los Angeles opens Puccini’s splendidly melodramatic, disarmingly poignant ‘Fanciulla del West’ in Costa Mesa.

The dressy celebrants who filled the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Wednesday loved the opera.

They actually whooped, hollered, chuckled and cheered at the crucial climax of the last act. Small wonder.

Minnie--the golden-voiced, golden-hearted girl of the Golden West who teaches Bible classes, sells booze, slugs booze and dabbles in crooked poker--materializes out of nowhere to rescue her tenoral lover, the charismatic, misunderstood, comparably golden-voiced bandit Ramerrez, alias Dick Johnson.

According to the libretto, the soprano must make her entrance atop a galloping steed. Mercifully, perhaps, this production sidestepped that iffy proposition by having the lady pump her way, urgently if gingerly, down a conveniently located railroad track on a conveniently located handcar.

The opera, of course, was Puccini’s splendidly melodramatic, marvelously sentimental, disarmingly poignant “Fanciulla del West,” inspired by David Belasco’s play and first performed at the mighty Met in 1910. Chances are, Puccini would not have approved of anything that produced misplaced mirth. He took the drama very seriously and, in the process, commanded us to do the same. Nevertheless, he was asking for trouble when he asked for a horse in his ultra-Italian horse opera.

The Music Center Opera of Los Angeles, which chose to open its lavish, secondhand version of “Fanciulla” in Orange County--the first installment in what could become a welcome series of freeway cooperations--employs no horse. No matter. The production, which originated 13 years ago in Chicago and subsequently traveled to San Francisco, does muster a nervous, scene-stealing hound for the first act, and a couple of supers dressed up in bear costumes for Act II.

The furry fellows, incidentally, used to clamber up a mountain and graze on garbage, but their distracting actions have been gratefully curtailed. Now the bears just sit picturesquely in the shadow of Minnie’s porch.

“La Fanciulla del West” requires no added gimmicks. This, you may recall, is the irresistibly quaint and beguilingly melodic opus that begins with a chorus of “Dooda, dooda, dooday day,” soon finds a generous saloon patron ordering “whiskey per tutti,” toys with a sentimental love theme that seems to have become a phantom tune for Andrew Lloyd Webber, and ultimately allows the exultant protagonists to sing a unison “addio” to California, to the Sierra peaks and the snows as they wander up a hillock toward a glowing cyclorama. Invariably, a certain amount of disbelief must be suspended.

The Music Center makes the suspension a fairly easy task. Harold Prince’s staging scheme--here entrusted to an assistant, Vincent Liotta--is rich in atmospheric detail, carefully motivated and reasonably resolute in its avoidance of operatic cliches.

Although the sets of Eugene and Franne Lee cramp most of the action in tiny cutaway shacks located center stage, the setup does serve to enforce advantageous intimacy. At the same time, it enforces a useful aura of desolation and poverty in the bleak little mountain panorama that looms in the background. This production, it should be noted, replaces a vastly different version that was to have been imported from Buenos Aires but fell victim to travel problems.

Richard Buckley, who had led a disappointing “Contes d’Hoffmann” at the Music Center several seasons ago, found the verismo challenge far more congenial. He sustained pathos without gooey sentiment, passion without excessive melodrama, accompanied the singers gallantly and coaxed warm, idiomatic playing from the enlarged Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Attempting the title role for the first time in her long, generally distinguished, drastically vicissitudinous career, Gwyneth Jones seemed more kindly schoolmarm than pistol-packing prima donna.

Erring on the side of ladylike restraint, this Minnie stretches credulity when she claims never to have waltzed, much less kissed. But she always exerts a sympathetic central force. The wonted impetuosity will, no doubt, come with seasoned repetition.

Even now, the Welsh soprano provides staggering compensation for any dramatic tentativeness with endless reserves of gleaming, steely tone. She also savors the introspective counterforce of a shimmering pianissimo. A much-admired Turandot, she finds no terror in a heroic challenge that defeated such presumed paragons as Leontyne Price and Renata Tebaldi.

Johnson has long been one of Placido Domingo’s most congenial assignments. He made the most of it on this happy occasion, acting with uncanny virile charm, tracing the line with easy fervor one moment and with insinuating sensuality the next. It seems unlikely that many, if any, tenors today can sing “Ch’ella mi creda” with such compelling ardor offset by such refined eloquence.

Justino Diaz, undertaking the villainous yet gentlemanly platitudes of Jack Rance for the first time, sang darkly and sturdily, phrased intelligently, acted as sympathetically as the libretto would allow. His unlikely transformation from bass to baritone is progressing beautifully. Call him Sheriff Scarpia.

The large, uniformly strong supporting cast included Wayne Shepperd (the sonorous Jake), Louis Lebherz (the crusty Ashby), Greg Fedderly (the innocent Joe), Michael Smith (the sensitive Nick) and Michael Gallup (the vulnerable Sonora).

Before the performance began, an ominous voice on the public-address system warned the audience that “there may be a delay in the operation of the supertitles because of a sudden illness on the part of the operator.” The unfortunate technician, it turned out, had been rushed to the hospital with an internal ailment, and his later-than-last-minute replacement could not get the translations onto the proscenium screen for at least half an hour.

The first-nighters accepted their temporary textual deprivation in good humor. Perhaps it was healthy for them to have to watch the opera--and listen--for a while rather than read it.

“Fanciulla” will be repeated in Costa Mesa Saturday night at 8. Information: (714) 556-2787. Los Angeles performances follow on June 12, 15, 18, 21 and 23. Carol Neblett takes over the role of Minnie at the two final performances.

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The venture down the freeway for Los Angeles Music Center Opera has been a happy one, according to managing director Peter Hemmings. “It was the first time we’ve ever played outside Los Angeles County--our first tour, so to speak--so that was exciting,” he said. “I’m very pleased with the outcome and our association with Orange County. We haven’t discussed anything about the future, but I think they were as pleased with us as we were with them.” The performance Wednesday was virtually sold out, and the same is expected for Saturday, with more than 90% of the house already sold.