The Viennese Puccini? Well, sort of. The composer had just set upon the task of creating an Austrian-style operetta when the Great War broke out, dampening his enthusiasm. Not wanting to waste the material, however, Puccini fashioned a love story in three quarter time, changing the locale to a Paris that seems more at home on the banks of the Danube than the Seine.

“La Rondine” is not the diminutive of the quintessentially Viennese Arthur Schnitzler play “La Ronde,” which was so popular at the time. Rather, it means “the swallow,” a reference to the heroine’s need to migrate in order to find happiness, however brief. The work was a hit at the Met in the era of Lucrezia Bori and Beniamino Gigli, but has steadily declined in frequency of performance ever since.

The piece is a little hard to pigeonhole: Lyric comedy, the standard description, doesn’t quite cut it. It is more a fantasy, tinged with nostalgia and ultimately regret. But however we think of “La Rondine,” this current realization at the New York City Opera is probably the most charming that any of us will ever see. New Yorkers can feel fortunate that there is a company here in town that rescues these precious nuggets from the miner’s pan on a regular basis (speaking of which, City Opera is also doing “The Girl of the Golden West” this season).

The production by Lotfi Mansouri is positively ravishing. In an odd turnaround on Lincoln Center Plaza: As the Metropolitan goes more for scrims and minimalist light, City Opera has opened the floodgates of opulence. The opening set of glorious, pink Second Empire style, complete with roseate sky, evoked applause even before the first note was struck. Flower imagery is everywhere: On the stage, in the text, in the musical bouquet itself.

There were two significant debuts this Sunday afternoon. Choreographer Peggy Hickey fashioned a simply superb second act: The females of the waltz lifted up like carousel horses as they approached the front of their swirling circle. The dancing underscored that this work is really about illusion and its unique place in our perceived and romanticized reality. A magnetic pair of apache dancers at stage center tells the story even more forcefully than the singing lovers at the corner table.

Also making his first appearance was conductor Stephen Lord, who led the orchestra and about 30 singers in a controlled but emotionally overflowing performance that captured just the right idiomatic sense of old Vienna. With hints of rubato and slight pauses, a little extra vibrato and a tasteful garnish of schmaltz, Mr. Lord communicated that signature, slightly decaying style that the Viennese call, in a rather untranslatable phrase, “beautiful dirt.”

Overall, the staging was masterful. After learning that the country boy is about to experience his first night in Paris, we all were waiting patiently for the second act to begin, respectfully being as still as church mice as the conductor lifted his baton. All of a sudden, laughter arose and began to get louder. This was quite disturbing in such a quiet hall, until the curtain rose to show that it was the revelers on the stage, who simply couldn’t contain their glee any longer. This shock to the system was extremely involving and successfully broke down the fourth wall to let us all into the center of the story.

The singing was uniformly good if not exceptional. Out of the crowd of demimondaines the fine characterizations of Tracey Welborn as the poet and Angela Turner Wilson as Lisette stood out. Pamela Armstrong was also impressive as the heroine Magda, conveying subtle emotions in the beginning as a young woman who is already world-weary and in a retrospective mood. She was persuasive in the one big number in the entire work – “chi il bel sogno di Doretta” – and carried off the final scene, the only one that sounds like the Puccini that we know and love. Her intensity made me long to hear her “un bel di” at some future date.

Puccini scholars positively obsess about not classifying this piece as an operetta, but for the life of me I don’t understand why. In a city that erected a statue of Victor Herbert in its Central Park, isn’t there still a place for some truly affecting lighter fare?