There's more to Georges Bizet heroines than Carmen, and more to opera performances than the stage.

Opera Theater of Pittsburgh is demonstrating both with a production this weekend of an obscure yet racy one-act opera, "Djamileh," at a most unusual location, a carpet hall.

The setting is within Artifacts, a high-end furniture, antiques and rug gallery that moved into the West End in 2006. The opera will be staged in the middle of its massive rug storeroom, with patrons sitting on pallets of Oriental carpet around the stage. The event is further removed from the typical operatic experience with a cocktail hour before the show.

"We have done operas in unusual spaces before and sometimes with dinner at a person's home. This is a mix of both," says Opera Theater's artistic director Jonathan Eaton.

While the opera makes "Pretty Woman" seem tame by comparison, it essentially is a comedic foil for the music: A prince in Cairo buys a new slave girl each month, but the latest belly-dancing beauty, Djamileh, unexpectedly falls for him. With help from another servant, Djamileh tricks her master into buying her again, and eventually they fall in love.

While the opera's plot, taken from Arabian Nights, fits the Persian rug-draped hall, the connection came the other way round.

"They were doing a performance at the Warhol Museum that was not good for sound, so they needed carpets on the gallery floor," says Artifacts vice president Michael Terral. "When I received the call I said I could cover the whole building in rugs, if you want. So we supplied them with 20 very large oriental rugs to completely cover the floor of Warhol. When they had been over to the showroom, they were completely taken with the atmosphere."

And Eaton hopes that audience members will be, too. "We hope that people who may not feel comfortable going to a three-hour opera in a funny language will come to a rug shop with belly dancers," he says.

First Published: October 1, 2008, 8:00 a.m.