REMEMBER THE NAME: APRILE MILLO

They don’t seem to make Verdian spintos anymore. At least they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

Rosa Ponselle was a spinto. So was Zinka Milanov. Renata Tebaldi and Leontyne Price followed. Then came the big, painful void.

The sopranos mentioned above were drastically dissimilar singers, but they shared certain basic virtues. Each commanded a healthy, warm, pliant sound--opulent in the middle, brilliant and radiant at the top.

It was a sound big enough to ride the great ensemble of the Nile Scene in “Aida,” light enough to float the ethereal pianissimo tones of “D’amor sull’ ali rosee” in “Il Trovatore,” eloquent enough to break assembled hearts in the arching “Ave Maria” of “Otello,” heavy enough to ignite the passions of “Pace, pace, mio Dio” in “La Forza del Destino.”

The lirico spinto (literally a “pushed lyric”) soprano didn’t have to command the roof-rattling resources of a Turandot, the iron thrust of a Bruennhilde, the heroic fioritura of a Norma or the gentle purity of a Mimi. By definition, bona fide spintos flourished in the generous, long-lined, middleweight challenges that fell somewhere between refined lyric simplicity and full-force dramatic indulgence.

Vocal categories are, of course, man-made. As such, they must be somewhat arbitrary. Ponselle happened to be able to extend her repertory successfully to include Norma. Milanov tried, but probably should not have. Tebaldi compromised her career during its final years by assuming such inappropriately demanding roles as La Gioconda and Minnie in “La Fanciulla del West.” Price also ventured, briefly, into dangerous Puccinian waters.

Despite individual repertory detours and extensions, these divas enjoyed their greatest triumphs as gutsy Verdi heroines. They had the right vocal weight, the right color, the right range, the right technique and the right theatrical temperament.

In recent years, the same Verdi heroines have become the property--by unhappy default--of a number of ridiculously small- and thin-voiced, underqualified, would-be prima donnas. Most of these well-intentioned but misguided ladies have paid a price for their ambitions.

Some have damaged pretty voices that should have been limited to the graces of Donizetti, Rossini and Mozart. Others--at the Met one day, gone the next--have committed the equivalent of vocal suicide. A few exceptions, aided by sympathetic conductors, have survived by dint of canny intelligence. Even these, however, have ultimately tended to cheat poor Verdi, not to mention an impoverished audience.

Desperate opera companies have strained mezzo-sopranos with duties designed for bona fide sopranos, forced Germanic talents into uncomfortable Italianate molds, housed bel-canto canaries in cages intended for more formidable birds, invited comprimarias to inhabit star dressing-rooms, allowed provincial standards to discredit international meccas. . . .

Nostalgic old-timers, in the meantime, have clucked angrily, nodded sadly and made rude noises. One can hear a lot of pining these days for the snows of yesteryear.

Enter a lustrous-voiced, 27-year-old Cinderella born in New York and reared in Southern California: Aprile Millo.

She first attracted attention singing Norma’s “Casta Diva,” of all things, in a San Diego contest when she was only 21. An Aida followed in Utah in 1980. Later that year, Daniel Cariaga of The Times heard her in a concert at the Scottish Rite Auditorium and found her sounding “as rapturous and resplendent as the young Eileen Farrell.” When Millo offered a preposterously arduous Ambassador recital in 1982, another Times critic--this one--thought he detected “gold in that throat.”

Europe beckoned, with a prestigious award in a major Italian competition, an Aida in the German provinces (Karlsruhe) and a late-season debut at a troubled La Scala, where she succeeded Mirella Freni--one of the better ersatz - spintos --as Elvira in “Ernani.”

Millo kept coming home, however, to the presumed Big Time: to the Metropolitan Opera. She had become a nominal--unseen and unheard--member of the roster in 1981. Given her credentials, her progress wasn’t precisely what one might have expected.

In December, 1984, she was still one of those young singers who tend to get lost in the repertory shuffle. The management had deemed her good enough to sing--with crude amplification--in one of its Central Park concerts and good enough to serve as an understudy. Millo obviously was deemed good enough to be offered bit parts, and she “caught hell,” she recalls, when she wisely rejected them.

Still, according to the powers-that-were, Millo wasn’t deemed good enough, or deemed ready, to be assigned major roles in her own right. Then, one memorable winter night, Anna Tomowa-Sintow (another imperfectly fabricated spinto ) got sick and had to cancel a performance of “Simon Boccanegra.” Without formal rehearsal and apparently without stage-fright, Millo sang Amelia and enjoyed a resounding triumph.

History repeated itself later when Millo took over for Montserrat Caballe in “Ernani.” This season she earned wider approbation as well as a coveted national broadcast when she spelled the suddenly “indisposed” Mara Zampieri in a wondrous “Don Carlo.”

Nevertheless, the Met moves in strange and mysterious ways. It is still moving slowly on Millo’s behalf.

The young soprano has reaped the sort of reviews that herald superstardom. She has developed something akin to a cult following among New York’s operatic groupies. She held her own very nicely opposite the great Carlo Bergonzi in a Carnegie Hall performance of “I Lombardi,” even though she was ill herself this time.

Last month, denying that April is the cruellest month, Angel Records released a somewhat uneven but in many ways spectacular Verdi recital by the debutante. Vienna, Verona and Hamburg have made grandiose offers.

And what does the Met plan for her now? Liu--a lovely role but not really a spinto challenge--next year in one late-season performance of Puccini’s “Turandot,” and a short run of second-cast Aidas.

An intriguing combination of little-girl neophyte and confident it’s-a-jungle-out-there prima-donna, Millo claims she doesn’t mind waiting.

“God has his plan,” she announces over drinks in a glitzy new high-rise hotel overlooking Broadway.

“I have learned well. This is a good way to see what is good to do and what is not good to do. In any case, I think I was meant to be on the shelf for a while. Now is the time to soak it all up. . . . “

“It is still good to be a cover,” she declares, her husky speaking voice hardly hinting at the splendor that marks her singing. “One can’t jump right in and do the whole thing. I don’t want to fly around. It is good not to do too much. It makes one strong. I need stability. I want roots.” One wonders if she protests too much.

“I am of another time, another age.”

She hastens to add that she will sing the opening Aida of the season at the Met in 1989, surrounded by rather heady company: Placido Domingo, Agnes Baltsa and Sherrill Milnes.

When Los Angeles last saw Millo, she did not exude much theatrical flair. Rather short and, like many a soprano before her, rather amply proportioned, she tended to indulge in homespun, old-fashioned, all-purpose operatic postures. She has learned to command the stage with economical gestures, however, and she now exudes compelling urgency and simple dignity--even a certain glamour.

“I have worked hard,” she explains, with a self-deprecating grin. “I also have lost 20 pounds. The battle continues.”

Some experts theorize that spinto sopranos develop with age, that an essentially lyric voice can become big, full and rich only with maturity. This may have been true for Kirsten Flagstad and Leontyne Price; it wasn’t true for Ponselle and Milanov. Millo insists it isn’t true for her.

“I was always ‘old,’ ” she muses. “They called me a 40-year-old midget when I started. I tried singing little Mimi in San Diego and dropped dead in the role. Then I tried Aida. It just felt right.”

Does that mean she is predestined to be a Verdian forever?

“Hardly,” she purrs. “I really want to try the lighter Wagner parts--Elsa in ‘Lohengrin’ and Elisabeth in ‘Tannhaeuser.’ The French repertory interests me too. In fact, I’ve just signed to make a recording of ‘La Juive.’ ”

It may be worth noting that she speaks Italian, but only sings German and French.

Millo is still innocent enough to be able to afford candor.

“I’m terrible in rehearsal,” she admits. “It’s a miracle they even let me go on. But when I do go on, everything is different. I’m such a ham!”

Was she nervous at her debut?

“Me nervous? I couldn’t wait for the curtain to go up.”

Is she intimidated by the size and mystique of the Met?

“Never!,” she shrugs. “For me, it is just an intimate hall. I feel good singing on that stage. It is perfect.

“But I am intimidated by the politics. I saw one famous soprano aced out of here without much ceremony or apology. If it could happen to her, it could happen to me.”

How does she feel when she is compared to the great singers of the past?

“At first I am deeply moved, flattered, unbelieving. Then I sometimes wonder how I stack up on my own. Ponselle? Milanov? How about Millo?”

Is she happy with the new recording?

“Well, not 100% happy. Some things please me a lot. Others don’t. Maestro (Giuseppe) Patane was a real inspiration. But in some instances, I think we were so busy striving for perfection that I forgot about characterization.”

Certain critical eye-brows will no doubt arch when it is discovered that two of the test pieces on the record, “Ernani, involami” and “Tacea la notte placida” from “Il Trovatore,” lack the customary cabalettas . Those who don’t know Millo’s work may speculate that she was daunted by the coloratura flights. Those who do know her know otherwise.

The established Elvira and incipient Leonora offers no convincing explanation for the omissions. She seems a little defensive.

“If people want to think I can’t manage the fioriture , let them think so. There just wasn’t enough time. We put together the whole thing--nine arias--in five three-hour sessions.”

She finds questions about her facility with florid challenges almost amusing. “I can sing Lucia,” she volunteers. “I can sing ‘Traviata.’ ”

And how high does she vocalize?

“Up to an E-natural.”

Millo has studied voice, she says, only with her mother. “She’s the most remarkable woman I know, a former singer, an attorney, a nurse.” Now the young soprano works with a New York coach, Rita Patane. “Rita’s wonderful. I adore her. When I’m not working with her, I learn most from listening to old records.”

Her plans are relatively simple, her modus operandi not so simple.

“Right now, I want to sit still,” she says only half in jest, “and try to remember what my name is.” She will continue to accept her contracted cover assignments “in good faith until 1990. Then no more.”

The dimples are becoming steely. The sweet young thing shows signs of being a tough cookie.

A career in Italy?

“I would love to go back to La Scala, but not unless the conditions are totally right, not unless I am in the first cast.

“I’m just beginning to learn that not everyone out there watching me is kind. Someone actually cried out ‘Brava, Freni’ in the middle of my aria at the second ‘Don Carlo.’ I was destroyed, physically destroyed.

“First it made me sad. I realized that there are people out there who don’t even want to listen. Then it made me mad. I guess I’m not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm anymore.”

She pauses, gazes out a window at the traffic jam below. She becomes sentimental, philosophical, demure, mushy.

“Of course, it is all worth it. Things are moving so fast now that I feel like I’m watching myself in an old movie. I just hope it turns out to be one of those nice 1950s sagas, the kind with the inevitable happy ending.

“Sometimes I can’t believe what is happening. I go to church every Sunday.”

Tutte le feste al tempio. . . .

“I exist in a heaven that few people see. I live with beautiful music, am permitted to be part of it. I tell myself I am not worthy. I talk to God. I try to say thank you.”

Vissi d’arte. . . .