SPANISH SOPRANO CRAFTS AN ENDURING CAREER

Protecting oneself is the main thing in having a long career, says Pilar Lorengar. The soprano from Zaragosa, Spain, ought to know; she has been a leading singer in Berlin since before there were two Berlins--East and West.

The veteran soprano first went to Germany in 1958 at the behest of the late Carl Ebert. Three years later, she was one of the first operatic stars created by the then-new Deutsche Oper of West Berlin.

And she is still very much an active member of the company. Tonight, for instance, she appears as the Countess in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” final opera in the current three-production engagement by the West German troupe in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center.

“When the rehearsal schedule is too short, or the performances are too close together,” the blond soprano confides in the lobby of her hotel in Little Tokyo, “I sometimes see that I may get sick. Then I try to change things.”

The secret to maintaining the voice, Lorengar believes, is “never to go beyond what is natural for you, never to push and never to force. It’s not a matter of age--it’s a matter of muscles, and of technique.”

The 57-year-old soprano arrives two days early at any destination where she will be singing. And after a heavy schedule of performing--as last year, when she sang a number of Toscas in Australia in a short period--”I take off 10 days and rest the voice.”

The resulting longevity is its own reward, Lorengar claims. “One must work very hard to balance all the parts, to stay in training, to coach regularly, to remain healthy. But keeping the voice fresh is worth all the trouble.”

A healthy ego seems to be at work here: Lorengar does not hesitate to point out that she was the first Tosca (and James King the first Cavaradossi) in the West Berlin production of Puccini’s melodrama performed here last week. Nor to point out that she, too, sings with Placido Domingo, which she did this summer in her native Spain.

For more than two decades now, Lorengar has been a regular at the San Francisco Opera. Following her two performances here as the Countess, she goes to the Bay City for appearances in Verdi’s “Falstaff.”

“I will be in San Francisco for two months,” she says. “I prefer to be in one place, rather than to move around a lot. After San Francisco, I return to Berlin, then go to Spain, later to Brussels. I do not like short trips.”

Is there no vocal challenge she would still like to meet?

“Really not,” Lorengar replies, after thinking it over. “I began as a lyric soprano, and that is all I ever wished to be. When I first sang Tosca--which is heavier--it was because Lorin Maazel pushed me into it. He insisted that I had all the vocal colors for the part, and he believed it would not hurt me.

“But I went into it carefully. And I don’t sing it too often. Then, afterward, I always try immediately to go back to Mozart.”

In these two decades, little has changed in her career, Lorengar insists. Her list of leading roles has not dwindled, she says, for the reason that all her roles still suit her. “Except Pamina,” (in “Zauberfloete”), she specifies. “That one I can still sing, but prefer to leave to younger artists. Pamina really should be young.”

As for Mimi and Tosca and Elsa and Manon and Donna Elvira, Lorengar says they remain her specialties.

“I will sing them until I stop. And when I stop, I will stop completely. I am never going to be teaching.”