A VETERAN SOPRANO WHO LIKES CHALLENGES

“I don’t like singing easy pieces,” says veteran soprano Roberta Peters, who returns in recital to El Camino College in Torrance this week.

As if to prove it, Peters, who celebrated the 35th anniversary of her Metropolitan Opera debut in November, has scheduled, among other challenging items on her latest Southern California recital appearance, three of Donizetti’s greatest hits, the best-known arias from “Lucia di Lammermoor,” “Don Pasquale” and “Linda di Chamounix,” not to mention some other famous and exposing songs and arias by Mozart, Handel, Rossini, Richard Strauss and Verdi. In Marsee Auditorium at El Camino Wednesday night at 8, Peters will be assisted by pianist Marshall Williamson.

On the phone from her home in New York, Peters, 55, says the secret of her vocal longevity is in “choosing the right repertoire.” That means, she explains, that “singers with light voices, like mine, avoid the heavier roles.”

“I would love to sing Tosca,” Peters says, ebulliently. “And Salome. Those are my dream roles. But I won’t do them, at least not in this life. They would kill me, vocally.”

In recent seasons, however, the soprano says, “I have sung Mimi (in “La Boheme”) three times, each time with Charles Nelson Reilly as my stage director.”

She also sings concerts and recitals and, as she will in Orlando, Fla., in March, light opera.

“Noel Coward’s ‘Bitter Sweet’ (1929) offers me a wonderful role, one in which the heroine gets several flashbacks. The play holds up very well, although some of the lines at the end could stand updating. If all goes well, I may tour with it.”

Singers love to sing, of course, but most singers get tired of touring long before they are ready to retire. Does Peters dislike the daily grind of travel?

“Oh, no. Not at all. First of all, I have so many friends in so many places, it’s wonderful to be able to visit.

“Then, too, I take my tennis rackets and try to get in some games wherever I am.” And performing only twice a week contributes to the singer’s continuing sense of well-being.

“On the day of a performance, I keep a low profile. I try to relax and not talk. Of course, I’m not completely mute. But I take it easy.”

DEMISE: “Unfortunately, it’s true,” Robert Jacobson, editor-in-chief of Ballet News, told The Times last week. “The March issue of Ballet News will be our last.”

In a phone interview from his office in New York, Jacobson, who serves in a similar capacity for Opera News magazine--both are publications of Metropolitan Opera Guild Inc.--attributed the imminent demise of the six-year-old Ballet News to a lack of advertising revenue.

“We grew to a level, but then we couldn’t seem to get to a certain type of advertiser. The lack of ads was a Catch-22 situation, since the Opera Guild is into being a moneymaking organization.”

Since Ballet News and Opera News share a common editorial staff, Jacobson said, layoffs due to the halt in publication will be minimal. Indeed, he insists, “we were not operating at a real loss. We were breaking even.” And circulation had reached the 40,000 level. But “until a magazine gets to 50,000, certain advertisers won’t pay attention.”

On the other hand, Jacobson reports, Opera News is “in great shape. We have 125,000 readers, and our advertising revenue is in the neighborhood of $1 million annually.”

ALSO SINGING: Basso Cesare Siepi--who will sing in the “Don Carlo” being mounted by Long Beach Opera next month--appears in recital at 8 p.m. Saturday in Royce Hall at UCLA. His program will include songs and arias from the French, German and Italian repertories. His pianistic partner will be Hal Lanier.

This afternoon, two touring American operatic singers make Southland appearances in recital. In Ramo Auditorium at Caltech at 3:30, baritone David Malis appears on the recital series presenting young singers of San Francisco Opera. Malis, accompanied by Mark Haffner, will sing music by Handel, Respighi, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Duparc and Peter Warlock. And in Shatto Chapel at First Congregational Church, 540 S. Commonwealth Ave., at 4 p.m., tenor Joseph Porrello will present the West Coast premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s recent Five Songs for Tenor, as well as music by Bellini, Schumann and Poulenc.

AT THE PHILHARMONIC, MORE SINGERS: Arleen Auger, Gail Dubinbaum, David Gordon and Henry Herford will be the soloists with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this week in the Pavilion of the Music Center when Christopher Hogwood leads Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” and Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella,” complete. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and next Sunday at 2:30.

AND OTHERS: Robert Haag will play the complete keyboard sonatas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on five Sunday evenings beginning tonight at 7 in Campus Theater at El Camino College in Torrance. Subsequent installments are scheduled Feb. 9 and 23 and March 9 and 23. Tonight, Haag will play the Sonatas K. 279, K. 533, K. 283 and K. 331. . . . In celebration of Jascha Heifetz’s 85th birthday next Sunday, KUSC-FM on that day will broadcast the award-winning radio documentary produced by KUSC in 1981. The broadcast will begin at 9 a.m.