OPERA : Southern Belle Canto : Jennifer Larmore left Georgia for Europe to learn the secrets of divadom. With ‘L’italiana,’ the renowned mezzo finally makes it to L.A. (Looks as if her plan worked.)

In a rehearsal room at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the cast of Rossini’s bel canto screwball comedy “L’italiana in Algeri” (The Italian Girl in Algiers) is learning how to be confused and stupefied in proper buffo style.

Giving his international singers and production colleagues instructions in English, German or French--but not in Italian, the language of the opera--director Alain Marcel works through the startling plot reversals and pileup of coincidences that dominate the celebrated first-act finale. During this increasingly madcap sequence, all pretense to sanity eventually vanishes and the seven characters stagger around the stage complaining at length about the ringing, or hammering, or booming or bird-calls inside their heads.

Marcel keeps his cast moving at the allegro vivace pace of the score and everyone in the room seems to be wearing casual California-style street clothes--comfortable for hours of work on his highly physical action-plan. There’s one exception, however: a statuesque young woman with cascading black hair who wears the type of high-necked, long-sleeved, floor-length outfit of somber pea-green that might be suitable for the repentant, adulterous wife in “Stiffelio” but not the unsinkable, effervescent l’Italiana here.

As it turns out, the dress is the only thing somber about Jennifer Larmore, the 36-year-old Atlanta mezzo making her L.A. Opera debut in this production on Wednesday, after a decade of success in Europe and several recent New York triumphs.

Whether lounging mock-seductively on a pile of ornate cushions and knocking l’Italiana’s tyrannical suitor to the floor or offering offstage sympathy to a colleague over his sudden, mysterious allergy attack, Larmore puts out so much positive energy at the rehearsal that she quickly becomes larger than life.

Indeed, her peals of happy laughter become almost as familiar as Rossini’s music during the rehearsal: laughter over a new bit of business suggested by Marcel (“Ah can handle thayat,” she replies, sounding momentarily very Scarlett O’Hara); laughter over an especially impassioned embrace from tenor Kurt Streit as her lover (“Don’t hurt your back,” she jokes as he lifts her); and even at her need to ask “What’s goin’ on?” when she momentarily forgets where she’s supposed to be.

Larmore has reason to wonder, having sung “L’italiana” in wildly different stagings in Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Paris and Lisbon, as well as the Geneva version being re-mounted at the Pavilion. In Amsterdam, director Dario Fo asked her to do a striptease during her aria “Per lui che adoro,” but though she ended it topless, “all anyone saw was my back,” she says. In L.A., she may dramatically hoist up her bosom at one point in the Act 1 finale, and jut it temptingly at her suitor in another, but it stays covered.

For an interview and photo session during the “L’italiana” rehearsal period, Larmore arrives wearing flowing, floor-length, midnight-blue corduroy from the same source as her green rehearsal ensemble: Droopy and Brown’s, “right across from the English National Opera on St. Martin’s Lane in London,” she explains. “That’s my favorite shop. I like it because I’m not a trendy girl. I like the classical feeling.”

And the tiny marcasite turtle pin below one shoulder? “I’ve always loved turtles for some reason,” she answers. “They symbolize a lot of things in American Indian folklore and in other cultures--good fortune, for one thing. And fertility.” She laughs. “But we won’t talk about that.”

She laughs again and also feigns reluctance when asked about Cecilia Bartoli, that other young mezzo being lauded internationally. “Who wants to talk about her?” she exclaims in mock petulance. “This is my interview.”

A moment later, however, she’s denying that any “silly Tebaldi-Callas” rivalry exists between her and Bartoli--or that she wastes time looking over her shoulder.

“We like each other and know there’s absolutely no competition,” she says of Bartoli. “After all, there’s a lot of room up there--room for two, room for four, room for 10.

“When people have only heard our recordings, they can’t tell,” she continues. “They can’t tell the size of the voices and they can’t tell, really, the technique--because a lot of things can be enhanced or corrected. But anybody who has heard us live knows that we are like north and south, or whatever you can think of as a good analogy. There’s total difference.”

Asked to describe her own voice, Larmore concentrates on its expressivity rather than the technical fireworks that have brought her so much acclaim. “It sounds like me and, at the risk of sounding conceited, I think it’s warm,” she says. “It can be thrilling at times--that’s what people tell me, and sometimes even I feel it when I listen to things. It can be moving, and that’s more important to me than anything else: that people do feel something.”

Reviewing Larmore’s Metropolitan Opera debut in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” last February for the New York Times, James R. Oestreich concentrated on technique, noting that “her stage presence was as charming as her vocal production was gorgeous,” and she soared “freely and evenly throughout her remarkable range.”

“Ms. Larmore’s smooth, sturdy upper register is beautifully knitted to a metal-clad lower range reminiscent of Marilyn Horne’s,” he wrote. And since Horne used to own the bel canto mezzo repertory, that’s praise indeed.

The evolution of Larmore’s voice is unusual because most of it took place in Georgia churches, all-state choruses and, later, on stage in Europe rather than in conservatory singing classes. “Growing up, I had a chance to sing in choirs, and to get up and sing solos,” she remembers. “And also, in elementary school, they would always pin little papers on me for my parents, saying, ‘Jennifer has a beautiful voice. Encourage her.’ And they did.

“In junior high, I played flute in the band and our band director always made us sing our parts before we played them. And my family always had season tickets to see shows, and my father took me to dinner theater and operas--and the Met when they came. So I had a good basis.”

At Westminster Choir College in New Jersey, Larmore’s singing teacher declared that the best thing he could do for her rich, natural voice was to leave it alone. But eventually she did spend three years studying with pedagogue John Bullock “because I wanted to have a good, long, healthy career,” she says. “A lot of singers with good natural voices start a career without knowing what’s happening inside them or being able to verbalize it. And there comes a point when you start to hear something fraying, or they’re making possessed faces and you know something’s not right. And after a while you don’t hear about them anymore.”

After working with Bullock on the musculature of singing, Larmore recalls waking up one day and saying to herself: “OK, now I’m ready to have a career.”

Off she went to auditions in New York, “like everybody does,” only to find that, in her words, “I wasn’t good enough for [American] regional opera. The only companies that would hire me were La Scala, Covent Garden, Paris and Berlin.” She cackles wildly at the irony--though, in fact, she made her highly successful European debut in Nice rather than in the more prestigious cities she would get to know a little later.

That was 1986 and, no, Larmore doesn’t think she waited too long before returning to America. “I’ve had a chance in the past 10 years to get to know what I want to do and what I don’t want to do--which is most important,” she explains. “I’ve learned languages, honed my craft, for want of a better phrase, and I was always on the stage.

“What has happened to me has all come from working 10 months out of every 12 in the theater. So when I came back to America, I could come in the front door feeling confident, really good--and what could be a more perfect Met debut for me than Rosina?”

Larmore also thinks she sounds different now than she did 10 years ago: “Bigger, deeper, warmer even,” she says. “I started out with a voice in a box, the kind of voice that could do Rossini, Mozart and the Baroque. It was very refined, very pure and it was only suited for that type of repertoire. And then, as time went on and I changed a bit physically and grew up a bit in my mind and spirit, other facets and colors of voice started showing up--which excites me, because there are so many possibilities for the future. I’m not confined.”

The proof: She has just finished recording “Carmen,” opposite Thomas Moser and Samuel Ramey. Plus a wide-ranging album of travesty roles: “Trouser parts,” she says, “women who wear the pants.” And she looks forward to one day tackling Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” and Octavian in Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier,” among other challenges.

Right now, she’s awaiting her Atlanta homecoming: an opera gala in late July during the Olympics, and the Mahler 2nd a few days later.

She currently makes her home in Chicago with her husband of 15 years, bass-baritone William Powers, the man she says has had the biggest influence on her life “because I’ve never made a major decision in my career without talking to him first. He’s the one I trust the most. He can be brutal with criticism. And that’s the kind of people you need around you when you get to a certain point.”

That certain point, of course, is international stardom--though Larmore says the subject makes her uncomfortable. “When someone calls me a star, I just want to crawl into a hole because that’s not the way I think of myself,” she insists. “And if I ever exhibited diva temperament, my mother would smack me on the head. To me, the most important thing is the music--singing well, being healthy, being in love. Stuff like that.

“When I talk about my career, my voice, it’s not separate--it’s part of me 24 hours a day,” she says. “And sometimes I really wish I could take it out and massage it and put it in a little case and put it away for the night.”

But fame does have its rewards, she concedes, and they are important to her now. “It’s a great thing when you suddenly realize that the people you work with have started treating you differently,” she admits. “They’re really listening to you. Isn’t that novel, isn’t that nice?

“It feels good to be able to finally say something about a role you’d like to do, a place you’d like to do it, a director you’d like to work with. To be asked by the direction of the Metropolitan Opera, ‘Who would you like to conduct this?,’ and have them listen. That’s a great feeling.”

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The L.A. Opera “L’italiana in Algeri” is scheduled for six performances: Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 1:30 p.m., Jan. 24 at 7:30 p.m., Jan. 27 at 7:30 p.m., Jan. 31 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 3 at 7:30 p.m. Jennifer Larmore sings on the first four dates, Theodora Hanslowe on the last two. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, L.A. Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave. Tickets: $22-$120. (213) 365-3500.