`LA BOHEME' EVER YOUNG.

It looms like some high-rise emblem of unfulfilled desire, a half-finished replica of Paris' Eiffel Tower.

The year is 1897, and the steel landmark is still under construction as L.A. Opera's new production of ``La Boheme'' begins. For the next two hours, the majestic spire, visible in a painted backdrop, will keep watch over a ragtag colony of starving artists and unsinkable romantics. Its incomplete state will remind us that works of art, however great, are only cold facsimiles of the human lives poured into them.

Since it was first staged 101 years ago, ``La Boheme'' has always invited that kind of oversized symbolism. Puccini's opera is entertainment on a Carnival cruise liner scale, with famously lavish set pieces such as Act 2's riotous Christmas Eve festivities in Paris' Latin Quarter.

Herbert Ross' production, which opened Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, turns that tumultuous street scene into a brilliant cinematic spectacle, complete with bustling waiters and vendors, a chorus of adorable urchins straight out of ``Les Miz'' and a marching brass brand of French Zouaves resplendent in their scarlet hats and braided tunics.

Yet the durability of ``La Boheme'' stems not from its Barnum & Bailey theatrics, but from its staunchly human dimensions. The opera is about the fragility of youth and the tentativeness of art and idealism. With that in mind, Ross and his colleagues have fashioned a production that's young both in look and spirit, with no fewer than three of the principals here are making their L.A. Opera debuts: tenor Charles Castronovo as Parpignol; Nicolle Foland, alternating with Inva Mula as the high-spirited Musetta; and fellow soprano Ana Maria Martinez, an immensely appealing new talent who stars as tragic, tubercular Mimi, heroic lover of the struggling poet Rodolfo (Greg Fedderly). Suitably self-effacing in her body language for most of the performance, Martinez's Mimi has an earthy gravity and anguished sensuality, combined with a sudden impishness that brings Cecilia Bartoli to mind. She's no alabaster saint. Fedderly's ardent tenor matched her perfectly though his boyish enthusiasm needed turning down a notch.

The rest of the cast is studded with young performers whose physical charisma and acting ability mirrors their vocal gifts. Rodney Gilfry, blond and lean as a Malibu surfer dude, plays Rodolfo's artist friend Marcello with a headstrong waggishness well-suited to his rich, virile baritone. And Mula wilted with her own steaminess as she turned Musetta's famous musical come-on to Marcello into a moment of comic eroticism.

Conductor Placido Domingo and his orchestra squeeze Puccini's full-bodied score firmly but gently, wringing its overripe emotions without reducing them to pulp. Gerard Howland's set design, full of good ideas, whisks us from snow-encrusted rooftops to a Paris street lined with posters of showgirls and bathing beauties - bourgeois icons whose siren sexiness clashes with the dying Mimi's selfless modesty. Modern touches like these show why ``La Boheme'' has found new life in the urban pop musical ``Rent,'' which opens next month in L.A.

They're what keep ``La Boheme'' ever popular - and ever young.

What: ``La Boheme.''

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave.

When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 9, 12, 19 and 24; 2 p.m. Sept. 16 and 21.

Tickets: $24-$135. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three Stars.

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Photo: Greg Fedderly is Rodolfo and Ana Maria Martinez is Mimi in the L.A. Opera production of ``La Boheme'' at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.