Arguably the world's most lovable opera, Puccini's La Boheme tells a story about starving young artists creating, loving and dying in Paris that not only has hugely appealing drama seamlessly integrated into a masterful score, but holds up under endless hearings and less-than-wonderful performances. To love it is to advocate for it - and welcome its exposure to a wide, diverse Mann Center audience (even one that, like Tuesday's, seemed a bit suspicious of it).

This version was inevitably sketchy, for lack of staging, and truncated, with minor characters and the Act II chorus cut. So there was some choppiness. For listeners who didn't know the piece, was it coherent? Hard to say.

The Philadelphia Orchestra couldn't have been very familiar with the score but played it well - though not so well that the players were able to work their distinctive magic on a score that could show off the string section's best qualities. Making room for the singers meant that the orchestra took a recessed position on the stage, which seemed to reduce the immediacy of the sound.

Left with a large space to fill, the singers who were most successful were those who knew that while volume is nice, meaning carries much more effectively. One of those was the latest star tenor from the Academy of Vocal Arts, Michael Fabiano (Rodolfo), whose vivid characterization of the text allowed even the more intimate scenes to come off well; the voice itself borders on splendid. But his Mimi, Darina Takova, had such problems with volume you wondered at times if her microphone was broken. And though her Act IV death scene was powerful, she seemed herself to be under the weather, particularly in light of her many leading soprano credits at such institutions as La Fenice and La Scala.

The vocal mismatch in the opera's secondary couple - the almost-Slavic-sounding baritone of Luis Ledesma and the pinpoint (bordering on shrill) coloratura of Arianna Zukerman - worked well in light of the tempestuousness of their characters, Marcello and Musetta. Russian bass Grigory Soloviov's big moment, as Colline, was his Act IV aria about pawning his winter coat; its quiet intensity registered well thanks to his sense of dramatic purpose.

So the opera was there, basically. And who knows, maybe in years to come, we'll meet somebody who stumbled upon La Boheme in this populist venue and was hooked. That seemed not the case with those around me, but one can hope.