If you had to name an opera you thought Seattle music lovers were dying to see and hear, what would be your guess? "Carmen"? "Madame Butterfly"? Maybe the ever-beloved story of ill-fated young lovers, "La Boheme"?

Seattle Opera general director Speight Jenkins says it's none of the above. Instead, he gets the most requests from the public for a repeat of Daniel Catán's "Florencia en el Amazonas," which was heard here in March 1998, shortly after its world premiere.

In the world of classical music, new works are often the kiss of death at the box office — but not this time. "People of all age groups have come up to me, and sent me letters and e-mails and phone calls," marvels Jenkins, "all asking when we were going to repeat 'Florencia.' It started about two years after the show. I've never had this happen with any other opera.

"It hit a chord in some way. I think it's partly Francesca's staging [Francesca Zambello was the original stage director], but the music is so good, and people seem eager to see a modern opera work. People walked out after the opera loving it, wanting the opportunity to hear it again."

This is all music to the ears of composer Catán, who thinks Seattle listeners heard the best of all the productions he has heard so far.

"It was beautifully done in Seattle," said the Mexican-born Catán in a recent telephone interview. "I think the public in Seattle is the greatest in the world; they are so committed to the arts."

So far, the opera has been presented in full, in staged productions, in Los Angeles, Houston and Seattle, as well as concert and/or excerpt performances in Mexico City, Mexico; Leticia, Colombia (the port city where the opera's action begins); and in Manaus, Brazil (the destination of the opera's characters).

Houston Grand Opera, like Seattle, has staged "Florencia" twice, and the opera has been recorded on the Albany label.

Since "Florencia," the composer also has produced a new comic opera, "Salsipuedes" (translated as "get out if you can"), which takes place on a Caribbean island and is subtitled "A Tale of Love, War and Anchovies." Its October, 2004, premiere in Houston was "extremely successful," Catán says, and was favorably reviewed as far afield as Germany.

The genesis of "Florencia" was a scene in Catán's earlier opera, "La hija de Rappaccini" ("Rappaccini's Daughter"), where the composer says he discovered a new way of writing for orchestral instruments that gave "good results, depicting a magic garden. I looked for another scenario for this kind of magical music." He found it in the writings of Gabriel García Márquez ("Love in the Time of Cholera"), whose themes of transcendence, magical realism and the quest for love inspired the "Florencia" libretto (by Marcela Fuentes-Berain).

ROZARII LYNCH Early staging rehearsals for "Florencia en el Amazonas" included director Andrew Morton, below left, and Lawrence Brownlee (Arcadio) and, on the stage from left, Luiz Ottavio Faria (the Captain), Nathan Gunn (Riolobo), Luretta Bybee (Paula), D'Arcy Bleiker (Alvaro) and Frances Lucey (Rosalba).

"Florencia en el Amazonas" is really the story of a journey toward love on the part of several people, most importantly the opera diva Florencia Grimaldi. She is traveling on a steamboat down the Amazon to the opera house of Manaus, Brazil, where she is to perform. Accompanying her are two pairs of lovers — a disenchanted married couple, and a young biographer of Florencia who is falling in love with the captain's nephew.

Florencia is retracing a journey she made 20 years earlier with her true love, Cristobal, a naturalist and explorer whom she left behind to advance her singing career in Europe. She hopes to find her long-lost Cristobal on this journey into her past.

A number of events occur, many of them directed by a magical deus ex machina figure, Riolobo, and the river journey brings all the characters to a new self-awareness. In the end, as the travelers approach Manaus, they hear that a cholera epidemic will prevent any of them from disembarking; Florencia collapses, realizing that she may never find Cristobal. Then she suddenly transforms into the Emerald Muse, the rare butterfly Cristobal has been seeking, and her spirit drifts toward his in a magical ending.

The composer took a trip down the Amazon, tracing Florencia's route, as he was writing the vocal score. This trip inspired him in several ways, not only musically but also providing visual ideas for the costumes and setting.

Catán says he chose a woman as the central figure in the opera, because "I write naturally better for women's voices, and I also think women are more courageous than men when it comes to facing the truth. But soon I found I was not only thinking about Florencia's journey, but also about other people in the various stages of love: young lovers full of excitement and fear, and a middle-aged couple now in the bumpy moments of marriage. As the characters developed, they all wanted their own story."

Maybe the popularity of "Florencia" lies partly in the audience's ability to identify with one or more of the characters.

"Great art makes people think," says Catán. "It is a mirror in which one can see oneself, and one's place in the world."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com