Less is more on local stages this fall, with the second opera premiere of the season, the National Theater's La clemenza di Tito, employing the kind of minimalist staging that the State Opera used to great effect in its new production of La Traviata. The results are the same: a stark but evocative set that showcases the singers and provides a great evening's entertainment.

Mozart was commissioned to compose La clemenza for the coronation of Czech King Leopold II in the fall of 1791, a busy and difficult time for Prague's adopted son. He was deep into composing his Requiem and Die Zauberflöte, and becoming gravely ill; just three months after La clemenza's premiere at what is now the Estates Theater, he died in Vienna.

The Prague premiere of La clemenza was a dud, with Leopold's wife, the Empress Maria Luisa, falling asleep and famously dismissing it afterward as "porcheria tedesca" (German swinishness). But this was not the judgment of Mozart's adoring public, who embraced the opera and kept it in the popular repertoire until the 1830s, when it fell out of favor and nearly vanished from world stages.

Though it lacks the soaring lyricism of Le Nozze di Figaro or grand sweep of Don Giovanni, Le clemenza is a small gem musically, with achingly sweet duets and trios and some lovely solos. (In between it's almost all recitative.) Dramatically, the piece is more problematic, with thin characters and confusing plot points, and classical Rome posing difficulties as a backdrop: At one point, part of the city is burned to the ground. And the climactic scene is set in a packed arena, with a public execution on the bill.

Nobody is going to mount a set on that scale for a minor opera featuring just six characters. But there's another way to go, as the German husband-and-wife directing team Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann demonstrate with this production. The set is a blank white box, fully open at the front of the stage, with the floor, ceiling and two walls tapering to a small square opening at the rear of the stage. The effect is like looking down a tunnel, with surprising results.

When scenery is projected in the rear opening, it's like a window, with the action unfolding in a spacious interior room. With the rear blank and items scattered on the floor, it becomes a surrealist landscape, with balance and perspective slightly askew. Visually, the receding set pulls the eye in throughout the evening. Acoustically, it does a great job of projecting the singers' voices out to the audience.

And the voices are a delight, particularly with two of the male parts written for mezzo-sopranos. New Zealander Sarah Castle handled one male role very smoothly at the premiere, with sopranos Anke Herrmann (Germany) and Elzbieta Szmytka (Poland) flanking her with solid performances in female roles. The standout of the evening was American mezzo Kate Aldrich, who got rousing ovations for her strong, clear singing and the passion she brought to the male role of Sesto.

Oddly, the visiting conductor for La clemenza worked about as well as the visiting conductor for La Traviata — which is to say, not very. Alessandro De Marchi, a veteran of German opera stages with a great reputation, got a serviceable but hardly sterling performance out of the National Theater orchestra for the premiere. The chorus, which sings from offstage in this production, sounded much better under house chorus master Lukáš Vasilek.