New London - Entering its seventh season, the Connecticut Lyric Opera continued nicely along its growth curve Saturday night by filling the stage at the Garde Arts Center with a musically and comically satisfying performance of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore."

This ever-popular bel canto comedy, the story of the village youth Nemorino who buys a bogus love potion from the snake-oil salesman Dulcamara to win the heart of the winsome Adina, featured what is now something of a repertory cast for the CLO.

Appropriately arrogant and blustery in the role of Belcore, the soldier vying for Adina, was baritone Maksim Ivanov, who sang the role of Onegin last season. Bass Laurentiu Rotaru, a bedrock of this company in more ways than one, sported a giant handlebar mustache and his usual warm, full timbre as Dulcamara. Tenor Sean Fallen was boyish and fresh-voiced as Nemorino.

And at the center of it all, as she has been since the company's founding, was soprano Jurate Svedaite. Utterly comfortable in the role's tessitura and hitting all the octaves for a big finish in the set pieces, Svedaite was in fine voice, especially lovely in the lyrical moments of the second act's duet with Dulcamara "Quanto amore" and her beautifully drawn "Prendi; prendi, per me sei libero."

The 20-piece orchestra, led from the keyboard by artistic director Adrian Sylveen Mackiewicz, played bigger than its size and was polished both in ensemble and in key obbligatos, such as the wind accompaniments in Nemorino's show-stopper aria "Una furtiva lagrima." Mackiewicz kept the lively score moving briskly, oftentimes too briskly in duets and larger vocal ensembles, when the orchestra raced ahead of the singers.

The direction by Michael Philip Davis was unobtrusive, letting the music flow and the stock comic characters make the stock comedy succeed.

The laugh-out-loud moment came in the second act, when the drunken Nemorino staggers on stage with a nearly empty jug of the elixir of love, which, Dulcamara told the audience, is actually Bordeaux. Unlike the naive Nemorin, the village girls already have heard the news that his rich uncle has died, and as they surround him and paw him, Fallen beamed in delight as he hugged his jug for its magical powers over the girls.

Making her debut as a principal with CLO in the role of the village girl Gianetta was soprano Elizabeth Kinder, a Connecticut College junior, who had fine stage presence and anchored the generally strong choruses. But the CLO chorus continues to be top-heavy, as the male voices were largely missing in action.

Saturday's performance here was the mid-point in the run for "L'Elisir"; the company has extended its footprint across Connecticut by also staging its productions in New Britain, Middletown and Waterbury.