Such an assessment is music to the BLO’s ears, because Kerwin, who also has a fondness for ZZ Top and the movie “Beer Fest,” is just the sort of person the group is trying to attract.

Not many of her peers are into opera, but Kerwin sees her newfound interest as akin to the thrills they seek out. “People my age have traveled the world, they buy all these electronic gadgets, they go rock-climbing, but they don’t go to the opera,” she said.

An apt introduction

Elizabeth Seitz, an opera buff, musicologist, and music history teacher at the Boston Conservatory, guided the students through the course syllabus, which began with Giacomo Puccini’s “La Bohème.” The perennially popular work about ill-fated love in 19th-century bohemian Paris opened the BLO’s season last Friday; with its easy-to-relate-to characters, the piece was an apt introduction to the genre.

At a time when operas centered on gods and kings, Puccini favored decidedly more plebian subjects, such as a woman dying of consumption and a geisha abandoned by her American sailor-lover. “La Bohème” revolves around a poet named Rodolfo who lives with poor, artsy friends and falls in love with his neighbor Mimi, a seamstress who is dying of tuberculosis. (If this sounds familiar, you might have seen the musical “Rent,” an updated take on Puccini’s opera.)

The Opera 101 students learned that Puccini’s own life might have been good fodder for an opera: While in his 20s, the Italian composer took up with one of his married piano students, Elvira Gemignani, with whom he fled after she became pregnant with his child. Many years later, after Gemignani began spreading rumors that Puccini was having an affair with one of their young servants, the distraught servant poisoned herself.

Seitz taught the class from a taped 1977 version of “La Bohème” starring Luciano Pavarotti, who had died just a couple of weeks earlier. Her interpretations of the on-screen actions clued the class in to the opera’s less obvious dimensions: the distinct bits of orchestral music that announced specific characters or indicated a scene’s mood; the dissonant chords that hinted at underlying trouble; the way Rodolfo and Mimi revealed their passions and hopes to each other through long, winding arias.

“What was really great about having Dr. Seitz open up opera for us was that the performance took on a greater range of color,” Kerwin wrote in an e-mail after the first class. “After she revealed each little nuance in turn – bits and pieces that I usually would have seen only as an aggregate – each of the characters practically exploded in size and complexity.”

As Kerwin had found with “Marriage of Figaro,” the characters of “La Bohème” felt familiar: Marcello, the cranky painter with whom Rodolfo lived, was like her best friend; Schaunard, the musician, was a co-worker. She could not help but wonder how she would construct an opera around the characters in her own life – what the music for her older sister or her boss would sound like. “I walked out of the class selfishly wanting someone to write a theme song for me,” she wrote. “I would really hope that it would sound like Snoop Dogg’s ‘Beautiful’; there’s a better chance that I’d get stuck with Radiohead’s ‘Creep.’ ”

A month into the class, Kerwin and her fellow students had the chance to watch Puccini’s work come to life during a rehearsal at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church. Onlookers, including friends of the cast, each took a libretto – a booklet containing the opera’s text – and filed into balcony seats above the stage. The unfinished nature of the rehearsal lent the experience a decidedly modern feel: Some of the actors sported Red Sox T-shirts; tattoos peeked out from under at least one shirt sleeve. Pavarotti’s Rodolfo had been replaced by the young, strikingly handsome tenor Derek Taylor. Sitting at a wooden table, he and Timothy Mix, playing Rodolfo’s friend Marcello, launched into their lament about the cold and the injustices of love.

Even though the students were without Seitz’s guidance and the musical accompaniment was considerably pared down (the full orchestra would be present at later rehearsals), the students had an idea of what to anticipate. As Alyson Cambridge’s Mimi took the stage, the music shifted, and her impossibly smooth, stunning vocals filled the room.

“I found myself wanting to hurl myself over the balcony,” Kerwin said later. “It was like experiencing vertigo, where I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I wanted to. I wanted to be in it.”

Indeed, even without subtitles or finished sets, the suddenly three-dimensional story mesmerized the audience. All eyes were on Kimwana Doner, as Marcello’s fiery former girlfriend Musetta, as she tried to win Marcello back. Scenes changed with great efficiency, as café tables and vending carts were whisked on and off the stage. Each action, each bit of song, was an event in and of itself, all locked in a tight choreography; the result was considerably greater than the sum of its parts.

“Until I saw this, I didn’t think about how much goes into a production,” Kerwin said, and she admitted that the satisfaction she took from understanding the opera better was diluted by her awe of the performers’ virtuosity. “I wish I could sing,” said Kerwin, who counts sewing and long-distance running among her abilities. “All of my talents feel totally wimpy.”

Last Friday, all of the elements finally came together as “La Bohème” opened at the Shubert Theatre. Kerwin, clad in a black chiffon tunic she had sewn specifically for the occasion, was escorted by a co-worker, Amos Benninga. The two sat in the third row, not far from Governor Deval Patrick and his wife, Diane. They were soon transported back to 19th-century Paris, along with the rest of the audience, as Kerwin eagerly anticipated her favorite parts.

“I couldn’t wait for Mimi’s aria,” she said during the first intermission. And when the curtain went down for the last time, she was unwavering in her praise of the performance. “I loved it,” she said, smiling. “It was so sad.”

“La Boheme” continues Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Shubert Theatre, 265 Tremont St. Tickets are $33-$126. Call 800-447-7400 or visit blo.org. As part of the Boston Lyric Opera’s “Bravo Boheme” program, half-price tickets for the Saturday night performance are available for audience members in their 20s and 30s; a party with members of the cast follows the show at blu at the Sports Club/LA (tickets $35; visit blo.org/bravo).