MUSIC REVIEW : Montserrat Caballe With Pacific Symphony at Segerstrom Hall

Sixteen years after her first Southern California appearance, in a gymnasium at UC Irvine in April, 1972, Montserrat Caballe returned to Orange County, Thursday night (in the interim, of course, the celebrated Spanish soprano has sung in most of our major concert locations, some several times over).

This time, as opposed to 1972, the place was appropriate: Caballe was closing the 1987-88 season of the Orange County Philharmonic Society with a non-subscription concert, assisted by the Pacific Chorale and Pacific Symphony, led by the young American conductor Bruce Ferden, in Segerstrom Hall at the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

And the diva arrived in good voice, to the noisy approbation of a sizable crowd in the 3,000-seat auditorium. She sang merely three arias in each half of this concert, then added two encores--”Io son l’umile ancella” and “O mio babbino caro,” which by now must be her signature pieces. The audience reaction was ecstatic.

As at her last local recital, in Royce Hall in October, the Catalan diva’s voice retains its lush sound, its fabled pianissimo and much of the flexibility of yore. Except in some areas of the Spanish song-repertory, Caballe never was one for deep textual probing; nor does she command many vocal colors, dramatic or lyric. She and her audiences have been content with the seraphic and healthy sounds she produces. Thursday, she produced again.

With Ferden’s musically integral and alert accompaniments--the Pacific Symphony playing crisply and sympathetically for its guests--the soprano offered the predictable arias from “Norma,” “Otello,” “Mefistofele” and “Manon Lescaut.” To these she added the novelty of an excerpt from Donizetti’s virtually forgotten opera of 1832, “Sancia di Castiglia,” gorgeously and affectingly performed, and the more familiar “Di tanti palpiti,” from Rossini’s “Tancredi,” ravishing in its exploration of the soft end of the dynamic spectrum.

The Pacific Symphony gave Ferden the compliment of detailed attentiveness and strong soloism in the exposed passages of the arias, plus solid playing in portions of “Norma,” “I Vespri Siciliani” and “Manon Lescaut.”

The Pacific Chorale made booming sounds (no amplification was used, as it had been last week in “Gurreleider”) and sang enthusiastically, in excerpts from “Aida,” “Lucia” and “Otello.”