LOS ANGELES DISCOVERS OPERA AND S.D. SOPRANO

Now that Los Angeles has discovered opera in a big way, it has also discovered a San Diego soprano. Virginia Sublett will make her Los Angeles Music Center Opera debut Tuesday night in that new company’s production of Handel’s “Alcina.”

Sublett’s last operatic role locally was the Countess in Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro,” one of the more valiant efforts in the 1984-85 Pacific Chamber Opera season at La Jolla’s Sherwood Hall. Since that appearance, the 34-year-old soprano has sung the title role of Dvorak’s “Russalka” for Riverside Opera, and last spring appeared in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” with Long Beach Grand Opera. But the Music Center Opera role is a plum of major-league status.

While this production of Handel’s Baroque extravaganza is largely a British import--it was mounted last season as a co-production with the Opera Stage of London--certain alterations for the Los Angeles staging made an opening for Sublett.

“While they are bringing most of the cast from Great Britain,” Sublett said, “they offered me the role of Oberto when they restored a good bit of music previously cut from the score of the London production.”

“Alcina” will be staged in the recently restored Wiltern Theatre, the first of the Los Angeles company’s productions given outside the Music Center. The Wiltern’s ornate gilded interior appropriately suggests the grandiose dimension of Baroque opera, and an ensemble that plays on period Baroque instruments, the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco, will provide this “Alcina” with additional Baroque authenticity from the pit. Former San Diego Symphony assistant conductor Richard Hickox will conduct.

Getting the part required auditioning for tenor superstar Placido Domingo, who is also the Music Center Opera’s artistic consultant. Sublett admitted to being overwhelmed at the thought of singing for Domingo, but she impressed him sufficiently with her interpretation of an aria from another celebrated Handel opera, “Giulio Cesare,” to land her the role in “Alcina.”

A specialist in Baroque performance, Sublett will sing a pair of major Bach works, the “Magnificat” and “Cantata 51” for soprano solo, in Ventura after the three Handel opera performances in Los Angeles.

Sublett will sing the role of Oberto, “a pants role, originally done by a teen-age boy, referred to in the score as young Mr. Savage,” she said. Noted Handel scholar Winton Dean, however, has written that William Savage, one of the native British singers Handel employed in his London opera company that first staged “Alcina” in 1735, was actually a countertenor. One of the many problems of staging Handel operas is the gender confusion in operatic roles. Since many of Handel’s heroes were written for virtuoso 18th-Century castrati, those roles must be sung by sopranos in modern revivals.

In any case, “it’s beautifully written right in the meaty, middle soprano range,” she noted. “One good thing about Handel’s opera writing is that he really doesn’t slight anyone.”

A native of Kansas City, Kan., Sublett came to San Diego four years ago to participate in the San Diego Opera’s educational programs and studied for a year at the company’s Opera Center before it was discontinued. She sang in several of San Diego Opera’s street opera productions and in the “Opera, It’s Grand” program, which proved to be training more for endurance than for artistic growth.

“I sang the role of Alice in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ 119 times that year for elementary school children,” she said. “I think we did close to 200 performances altogether of those traveling shows.”

Working with the Opera Center, Sublett encountered Spanish voice teacher Isabel Penagos and later returned with her to Spain for more intensive study.

As a coloratura soprano, Sublett’s goal is to make her singing sound effortless, “something that just flows out. But everyone should realize that there’s a tremendous amount of work that goes into making it sound that way. Not that the audience needs to be in on my angst, if there is any. They should relax, but for the singer there is a lot of work prior to performance.”