VOCAL STARS WITH THEIR OWN AGENDAS : Basso Samuel Ramey Is Singing the Deep-Voiced Roles of Operatic Success

As evangelist Olin Blitch, he gleamed lustfully at the title character in Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah.” For the role of Mozart’s Figaro, he fused gentle mockery with compassion. To portray Boito’s Mefistofele, he swathed his lean, agile body in a clingy stocking, leaped atop balustrades, convulsed with agitation and somersaulted into the final throes of wailing, whistling defeat before God.

All these characters have been portrayed by Samuel Ramey, who inherited from the late Norman Treigle the leading deep-voiced roles at New York City Opera. And he performed them all at the Music Center while the company regularly--until 1982--visited Los Angeles.

Since then, Ramey’s burnished basso and dramatic gifts have catapulted him up the international operatic ladder--just two weeks ago he sang the final Metropolitan Opera “Puritani” of the season in the celebrated company of Joan Sutherland and Sherrill Milnes. And the 44-year-old Kansan holds contracts for plum assignments there through 1991.

Now he’s treading an additional career path--that of the recital--and local audiences can witness Ramey’s West Coast debut as a singer of songs at Ambassador Auditorium on Sunday .

“I admit it’s a little scary,” he says on the phone from New York, his chocolate-suave voice resonating seductively and his off-handed charm flowing like wine.

“Singing a recital is much more difficult than enacting a stage character. Without costumes and scenery and an action scheme, I actually feel naked.

“But there are certain rewards you can’t find in opera. Getting close to the audience, for instance, and experimenting with vocal nuance. It’s all new territory for me,” he says of this first recital tour that began two months ago in Dallas and ends in Bologna in May.

Otherwise, Ramey enjoys more stage options than many another bass--so often the roles for this voice category are patriarchal, leaving the singer little to do but project pained nobility and self-sacrificing wisdom by way of black, rolling tones.

Some years ago he says he was advised to avoid these “graybeards” and focus on the “personality” parts--the previously mentioned, as well as Don Giovanni, Faust, the four nemeses in “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and Attila.

Indeed, the former small-town boy who always wanted to be a pop singer and never saw a live opera until he appeared in one (as a chorus member of a “Don Giovanni” production in Central City, Colo., in 1963) is “now having to dig around for another operatic hero.”

Beverly Sills, impresaria of City Opera, “gave me a standing invitation to suggest a production,” he says, “but we have nothing on tap since she mounted Massenet’s ‘Don Quichotte’ for me last summer. I simply haven’t been able to come up with an idea.”

He mentions “Rasputin,” a new opera that Sills commissioned American composer Jay Reise to write. Because of a scheduling conflict, however, Ramey is not signed to do it. And because the Met understandably does not want him to duplicate the repertory he sings at City Opera, which is just across the plaza at Lincoln Center, he finds himself constrained in taking up her offer.

What it comes down to is the fact that most composers did not assign the central protagonist to a bass voice. Names like Pinza, Tozzi, Hines, Hotter and Siepi just don’t command the public recognition of such high-pitched paragons as Caruso, Gigli, Corelli, Pavarotti and Domingo.

“As much as I love singing bass--after all, it’s the only sound I make--it would be nice to be a tenor . . . who has the bulk of leading roles and usually gets the girl and is paid considerably more.”

When he joined City Opera in 1973, Ramey had more than that to bemoan. Following on the heels of Treigle, the company’s star basso, he was destined to step into another’s shoes. Yet, he was criticized for imitating his predecessor, on whom Tito Capobianco conceived the slithery Prince of Darkness.

“I would have liked a ‘Mefistofele’ tailored to my own abilities,” admits Ramey. “But the production was so special and made so much money for the company that it would have been foolish to toss it out just for my sake.”

But Ramey doesn’t have to look over his shoulder these days, regarding career options or income: $500,000 yearly, according to the singer himself. A belated Met debut in 1984 found him to be less of a shoo-in, however, than some expected. Although the vehicle, Handel’s “Rinaldo,” was “perfect for the occasion,” he says--”showy but not a role that carries the whole burden”--there were problems.

The management was happy enough to acquire the Houston production and with it mezzo Marilyn Horne, but wanted to replace Ramey with a resident bass, regardless of the fact that he’d been hailed in major European houses. He says he smarted over feeling unwelcome, even after receiving rave notices.

“I can understand that (the Met) felt forced into taking me,” he says. “It has a strange attitude that one must work his way up, especially an American. But I’ve gotten past those testy times. Now everything is fine. I have contracts through the next five years.”

Vocally, Ramey sees no changes ahead. He plans to stick to the appropriate repertory that is familiar to him, and he rejects out of hand pursuing heavy, German roles.

“Wagner never appealed to me,” he observes, “and when the great Astrid Varnay told me I have a beautiful lyric bass and must never let anyone talk me into Wagner, I was delighted.

“Luck has been with me so far. All I have to worry about now is getting invited back to do what I’m best at.”